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Akaya Takahashi gained Japan’s first ever badminton Olympic gold collectively along with her doubles confederate in Rio 2016.© AFP
Ayaka Takahashi, who gained Japan’s first ever badminton Olympic gold collectively along with her doubles confederate in Rio 2016, has retired conceding she no longer has the “inner fire” to compete. Takahashi and Misaki Matsutomo scored a spectacular come-from-behind win on the 2016 Olympics, scoring 5 straight elements when down 19-16 inside the final sport to defeat Denmark’s Christinna Pedersen and Kamilla Rytter Juhl. But she has opted to skip the likelihood to defend her Olympic title on home soil, citing partly the selection to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Games by a yr as a result of coronavirus.
“After winning the gold medal in Rio, I’d been struggling to maintain morale,” she confessed at a web-based press conference this week.
Despite teaching onerous with Matsutomo, she said she had struggled with “records that were not satisfying enough in 2019, the suspension of tournaments, and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics”.
“I doubt if my inner fire and body will last for another year,” she said.
Takahashi said Matsutomo and her sponsors “respected” her decision, and that she now hoped to work to promote badminton.
Takahashi and Matsutomo, nicknamed “Takamatsu,” had been the first non-Chinese pair to win gold since badminton was launched to the Olympics in 1992.
Matsutomo suggested reporters she was “deeply grateful for the partnership”, together with she couldn’t take into consideration “having gotten this far” with out Takahashi.
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The coronavirus pandemic has badly hit the 2020 badminton world tour, forcing the cancellation of the celebrated Japan and China Opens subsequent month.
The Tokyo 2020 Games in the mean time are scheduled to open on July 23, 2021, though there are questions on whether or not or not the worldwide event can go ahead if the pandemic has not receded by then.
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