Portuguese hope for the future Beatriz Monteiro has withdrawn from the Spanish International due to a sickness that has effected the entire Portugal team
Fifteen year old Beatriz Monteiro is one of Europe’s up-and-coming hopefuls for Para badminton. One year ago, just a few months after her fourteenth birthday, the SU5 women’s singles player collected a silver medal at the Peru International, a Paralympic qualifying event.
On the way to that final she overcame world number six Megan Hollander (NED) with a quarterfinal 21-18 third game victory to set up a semi-final match against Turkey’s Zehra Baglar who currently sits one place and 140 points above Monteiro in the Race to Tokyo Paralympic qualifying rankings. Another third set win gave the Portuguese junior a shot at World and Paralympic ranked number four Kaede Kameyama (JPN) in the final and for a moment at 20-20 in the opening game we dared to believe the unthinkable.
One year on, now bigger, stronger and faster the rising star faced heartbreak today as she and her teammates were withdrawn from their various singles group stage matches due to a food poisoning outbreak which saw the entire Portuguese team in the hospital yesterday evening.
Read: Bartlomiej Mroz: It has been the toughest period of my life
Monteiro: We had a good chance!
We spoke with Fernando Monteiro today, the supportive Father of Beatriz to find out what happened and how this might affect her chances of Paralympic qualification who shared his feelings on this:
- The entire team was sick yesterday evening except one player, the other 5 players and the National Coach all had the same symptoms and the medical team at the hospital think it was food poisoning.
- At least it is nothing to do with Covid, but still it is a frustrating place to be. We had a good draw and so we had a good chance! Beatriz could try to leave Zehra behind and get some additional points (in the Race to Tokyo) but now she will have to stick to 9th place and we shall have to see what happens.., added Monteiro
Day one highs and lows
Amir Levi did nothing to help his chances of Paralympic qualification this morning as he was defeated by Frenchman Thomas Jakobs 19-21, 21-23. The result is likely to set up a tougher knockout stage for Israel’s WH2 player.
SH6 men’s singles Group C is a mouth-watering prospect as it features Malaysia’s Didin Taresoh and Ireland’s Niall McVeigh, both potentially scrapping for the final spot in the Race to Tokyo. The Malaysian had the edge this afternoon with a 21-11, 21-17 win over McVeigh to make him favourite to top the group
The man looking to upset that apple-cart is England’s Isaak Dalglish who is hot on the heels of teammates Coombs and Shephard and has been working hard over the past 12 months. He had this to say after today’s 21-10, 21-14 win over Ivan Escobar who completes the group:
- it was great to be back in international competition after a year off and interesting to be back in a big arena. My opponent Ivan has grown a lot since I last saw him and added a lot mentally and physically to his game. I coped well with the pressure today
- Didin and Niall are two big names in our sport and they are very well matched, but Didin had a little more class and experience today. I’m really looking forward to seeing whether my improvements will be enough to take on both men over the next couple days, added Dalglish
Follow the Spanish Para badminton international tournament here with us this week and across our usual platforms. The schedule and results can be found on tournament software here