Germany’s Valeska Knoblauch is safely through to the women’s singles semi-final, but loses out marginally in the women’s doubles with Elke Rongen

World and Paralympic Race number two, Valeska Knoblauch has been on fine form so far this week with straight-game wins throughout her Spanish International WH1 women’s singles campaign.

Tomorrow she faces a familiar opponent in Suisse Karin Suter-Erath in the semi-finals, which will be their sixth meeting since 2016. Knoblauch leads the head-to-head 4-1, whilst both women should qualify for Tokyo 2020. We spoke with Valeska this evening who said this about being back on the international circuit again: 

- It’s so fun to be playing again, and to have a female across the net from me, I only manage to train with the men at home. The game is a little more tricky as females have to have better drop shots, they don’t have the same power as I’m used to playing against.

- I’ve had an okay start here, but tomorrow will be a tough test against Karin. I hope to make the finals, if only to keep the tournament going for me a day longer. It’s such a nice feeling to be back here with the Para badminton community.

Read: A closer look at what’s to come

Knobaluch – ‘it would have been such a gift’ 

Whilst the women’s singles is on cruise control for Knoblauch right now, the WH1-2 women’s doubles is quite the opposite. Every ranking point counts for the Germans as she and partner Elke Rongen remain seventh in the Race to Tokyo with today’s Russian opponents within touching distance behind them.

The quarterfinal could not have been better staged, with both pairs capable of qualifying for the Games if they do well this week, at the very last qualifying tournament. Sadly for the German hopefuls, Tatiana Gureeva and Irina Kuzmenko came out on top and move into the semi-finals with a 21-18, 7-21, 21-19 winning performance.

Valeska Knoblauch had this to say about the match today:

- The doubles was so disappointing! Especially as Elke did such a good job and I am so proud of her, she was fighting so hard. It would have been such a gift for us both if we had won this game, we might have saved our spot for the Paralympics qualification. The Russians are just behind us and if they beat Thailand tomorrow they might overtake us

- It would have been better to not have to worry about the result today, and have qualified already but now it isn’t in our hands and all we can do is hope.

Follow the Spanish Para badminton international tournament here this week and across our usual platforms. The schedule and results can be found on tournament software here