What did the stars have to say on day two at the Tokyo Olympics?

Anders Antonsen (DEN) vs. Tien Minh Nguyen (VIE) 21-13 21-13

- I felt good throughout the whole match. A little tense in the beginning but I got a good start and I was calm and relaxed. I was tense because of my debut Olympics and also a little excited to finally get on court. The Olympics is a different type of event than I have ever experienced before. Because it's the Olympics, there were extra emotions. - Antonsen

- I wasn't sure what to expect on the emotions and stuff like that. I managed to handle it well and once we got started it was like a match at every other tournament. - Antonsen 

- Emotionally I'm in a good place. A little relieved to get a good start and happy that the nerves weren't too bad. – Antonsen

Ratchanok Intanon (THA) vs. Laura Sarosi (HUN) 21-5 21-10

- It's always tough to play against a top 10 player. It was pretty tough for me. I was trying to get as fun as I could on the court. I have not played Intanon before. At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games i played Michelle Li (CAN) and Pusarla V.Sindhu (IND) in the group stages and that was also tough. I play on Tuesday again, so we'll see. - Sarosi

On teammate Krausz's Olympic debut:

- He's made history to qualify in the men's singles. I'm really happy he made it and he qualified like three weeks ago – Sarosi

Marcus Ellis/Lauren Smith (GBR) vs. Joshua Hurlbert-Yu/Josephine Wu (CAN) 21-13 21-19

- We are really happy. It was an important match. After a good performance yesterday, we knew it was ours to get through. We didn't play our best in the second game, but we should be pleased that we did finish it in two games, and that we kept our nerve and fought for every point. Maybe in the second game we were a little bit less structured than what we wanted to be, and didn't move them around as much as we could, but we are bringing quality at the right time. - Smith

- These first two matches were key for us. Who knows what lies ahead. We wanted to get out of the group and we have reached our seeding so we are now going to relish the opportunity to play against the top five pairs.

Lee Zii Jia (MAS) vs. Artem Pochtarov (UKR) 21-5 21-11

- It was such a big difference. For me, he was just too good. I know I was injured and I had Covid, so the last three-four months were hard for me, but it doesn’t matter. He was crazy good. He was very fast and now I see why he won the All England. I think he’s one of those who can win the Olympics or at least get a medal. So good luck to him, and I will cheer for him. - Pochtarov

- I had an injury - it was near the Achilles - and had an operation but it took six months and I haven't fully recovered. This is my second Olympics. To qualify took two years, so I deserved to be here. So it’s not a bad result. - Pochtarov

Li Jun Hui/Liu Yu Chen (CHN) vs. Mark Lamsfuss/Marvin Seidel (GER) 21-14 21-13

- I think we lost on the service situation. We played too many hard, flat drives. They [Li/Liu] were faster and we didn't manage to put the shuttle in the right places. – Lamsfuss

Beiwen Zhang (USA) vs. Maria Utlitina (UKR) 21-5 21-11

- Obviously it wasn't that good for me. I couldn't take control of the shuttle speed. I was trying to play my game and it was very difficult for me. – Ulitina

Chou Tien Chen (TPE) vs. Felix Burestedt (SWE) 21-12 21-11

- Chou showed why he one of the highest-ranked players in the world. He made it extremely difficult for me and he was clearly the better player today. – Burestedt

- I tried to open up both games with a lot of speed and I tried to take advantage of my attack from the back and stress him a little bit. I think I had an okay opening in both games but I couldn't keep up that speed and he kept on being solid. He's the highest-ranked player I've ever played, so I will sit down with my coach and have a look at the match and evaluate. For sure there are a lot of lessons to be learnt. – Burestedt

Pusarla V Sindhu (IND) vs. Ksenia POLIKARPOVA (ISR) 21-7 21-10

 - For me it was more about my game, and how I could bring it today. Something is coming, something is not, but in general I’m happy with my match. - Polikarpova

- (However) I really enjoy Akane Yamaguchi (JPN) because she looks like a person who has never been a badminton player, she just enjoys it. I am reminded of when she was a junior, and my coach said, ‘It’s OK, she has never been a high-level player’. But then in two months, she won the Japan Open. You have some players for whom badminton is just nature to play. For Yamaguchi, this is just nature. She says, ‘OK, I play badminton and I won’, or ‘I play badminton and I lost’, and for her it’s just nature. This you cannot learn. It is something from nature and god coming to you. She’s here, and she’s coming for the medals, too. – Polikarpova

Nozomi Okuhara (JPN) - Yvonne Li (GER) 21-17 21-4

 - I had a good start and she was very nervous, you could feel it. I tried to keep it up, (but) I lost a little bit of pace towards the end of the first set, and she was able to get back into it. – Li

- In the second set, she just rode on from the first one, she took off and never looked back. I was not able to fight back. - Li

- She just improved. She was playing on a higher level in the second set, and she had a little bit of luck, too. I think she hit five or six net cords. It didn’t help me and I started to make more mistakes near the backline, I got unsure a little bit of how to find the length and to make the court bigger. - Li

- She was not reacting so hard to my shots anymore, and it was difficult for me to make points. – Li

Thom Gicquel/Delphine Delrue (FRA) vs. Dechapol Puavaranukroh/Sapsiree Taerattanachai (THA) 9-21 15-21

- It was a bad match. They played very well. But we gave them a lot of easy points and you cannot win against this kind of pair. – Gicquel

- I don't know what to say. It is not what we expected. We are disappointed but we have one more match tomorrow and we will try to win it to finish on a good note. – Delrue

Shi Yu Qi (CHN) vs. Matthew Abela (MLT) 21-8 21-9

- Amazing, loved every second of it. I was always going to give 100 per cent no matter what. I will try for Paris 2024, it's not too far away. It would have been nice to play another match here but it's okay. – Abela

- I had a score in my head, it was 10 and I'm happy I got close. One more point and I would have been more satisfied. – Abela

- My father and uncle play so I started early at five or six. I loved it and now I'm a professional. I love the sport and Olympics was a huge goal but I don't want to just participate, I want to compete. That's why I'm looking forward to Paris. – Abela

Mark Lamsfuss/Isabel Herttrich (GER) vs. Peng Soon Chan/Liu Ying Goh (MAS) 21-12 21-15

- We didn't expect to win in straight games, but we knew we could win, and we proved that on court today, because I think we were the better pair and we had a really good plan that worked out good. – Herttrich

- We were reaching the shuttle higher and bringing it down and that made it difficult for them. We attacked a lot, and our defence was good as well. We were better in every part of the game. I know they can play better, but we played our best. – Lamsfuss

- We came here with good self-confidence and we proved that also yesterday that we can bring that on court. We're confident and we know that against every pair in this group, we have a chance. – Herttrich

Hiroyuki Endo/Yuta Watanabe (JPN) vs. Vladimir Ivanov/Ivan Sozonov (ROC) 21-19 21-19

- Today it was a totally different game compared to yesterday. We played really well, we were all around the court, and we fought well. The Japanese are very good in defence and very quick, but we were close to them. Sometimes we got unlucky in the last few points. – Sozonov

- Yesterday we didn't show our 100 per cent, but today we did much better, so we are satisfied with the way we played. We hope we can continue like this for the upcoming tournaments. We want to win our next match. – Sozonov

Anthony Sinisuka Ginting (INA) vs. Gergley Krausz (HUN) 21-13 21-8

- It's a great moment. I'm the fist Hungarian male player in badminton at the Olympics, it's a huge pleasure to play here against these top guys. Especially Ginting. He's a crazy good player. couldn't get my lifts right, then I didn't stand a chance. It was a great pleasure to play and I'm excited for my match on Tuesday. - Krausz

- The problem was that I didn't get used to the speed. To play on these level of speed I need to get used to that and these players more, but I really enjoyed it. Ginting is an amazing player and I really wish him luck. - Krausz

- I qualified at the last moment, on 5 July. It was a really up and down moment, after the tournament season ended, I was thinking if I would qualify. After some reallocation places, I was out and then I was in. It was like a dream for me to be here. – Krausz

Praveen Jordan/Melati Daeva Oktavianti (INA) vs. Mathias Christiansen/ Alexandra Boje (DEN) 24-22 21-19

- I'm definitely happy with the way we played but obviously, really sad that we can't make it through the group. We were facing a top pair today and yesterday, and we matched each pair but they (Jordan/Oktavianti) managed to take the win today. – Christiansen

Zheng Si Wei/Huang Ya Qiong (CHN) vs. Robin Tabeling/Selena Piek (NED) 21-15 22-20

- I think we started out good, we had good speed and we could level their [Zheng/Huang] speed which is one of their greatest qualities until 15-all and then they got ahead. It put us under pressure. In the second game we put the pressure on them throughout and they didn't give up. It's shame we couldn't take the second game after leading for most of it. – Tabeling

- We came here with confidence and we showed that in the match yesterday as well. I think you always need to believe you can win. I think it showed today were possibilities for beating them. – Piek

Chen Long (CHN) vs. Raul Must (EST) 21-10 21-9

- It feels good that I'm able to qualify. Just to qualify for the Olympics is quite difficult and I'm happy to be here and be part of the game. The level here is really good and today I met a top level player. – Must

- The last year and a half has been quite difficult due to COVID-19. But I still feel that after these Games, I'm going to continue playing and see what happens. – Must

Maiken Fruergaard/Sara Thygesen (DEN) vs. Lee Sohee/Shin Seungchan (KOR) 15-21 21-19 22-20

- We needed to be ready in both defence and offence. We were more consistent and didn’t give up at any point. It was all-or-nothing and we gave it all we had. – Thygesen

- We were leading 19-17, I was telling her it would be nice to get to 20, but again sometimes when we are leading in the end, we have lost, and I made two mistakes, but I think we were quite ready and focussed on the job today, so we got it done. - Thygesen

- It was a really great match for us today. Everything that we planned we succeeded at today, so it was just nice to play on court. – Thygesen

- I think we can play like this a lot of times, but we have to believe in ourselves. And sometimes our mental problems come when we don’t believe that we can play well against the Asians. – Fruergaard

Mia Blichfeldt (DEN) vs. Chen Hsuan-Yu Wendy 21-7 21-14

- It was a great match, I gave it everything I had and I really enjoyed it. it was important for me to highlight the fun and the spirit in the game. I really think that helped. I've been struggling with some injures but I'm fit to play. I'm ready to play. – Blichfeldt