Paris 2024 Olympics: Lakshya Sen falls short of historic badminton bronze medal, loses to Lee Zii Jia
India’s Lakshya Sen missed a historic men’s singles bronze medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics badminton tournament after losing to Lee Zii Jia of Malaysia on Monday.
At La Chapelle Arena, Lakshya Sen, 22nd in the badminton rankings, suffered a 13-21, 21-16, 21-11 loss to world No. 7 Lee Zii Jia in 71 minutes.
The 22-year-old Sen failed to become the first Indian badminton player to win an Olympic medal in the men’s event. Despite outclassing his opponent in the first game, Sen conceded eight straight points to 26-year-old Lee Zii Jia to lose the second game.
He couldn’t mentally recover in the third game and the Malaysian dictated the rallies in the decider to win the bronze medal at Paris 2024. Sen also struggled with a bruise to his right forearm which bled and had to be taped for most of the contest.
Lakshya Sen, the reigning Commonwealth champion, began the contest with a 6-2 lead with his opponent making unforced errors early on. The Indian also made use of the court dimensions well and with line calls going in his favour, he went into the break with an 11-5 lead.
With the score at 17-12, Sen won four of the next five points to comfortably take the first game and put Lee Zii Jia under pressure.
The second game began with the Indian playing a sensational cross-court smash and kept pushing to make the score 7-2. But Lee Zii Jia bounced back and won five consecutive points to restore parity at 8-8.
The Malaysian continued to press forward and went into the break with an 11-8 lead to put Sen on the backfoot.
Lakshya Sen finally put an end to Lee Zii Jia’s advances and made it 12-9 to bring himself back into the contest and then made things level at 12-12. The two players continued to match each other point-for-point.
However, the five minutes of poor play from Lakshya Sen that allowed Lee Zii Jia to take charge of the contest ended up costing him and the Malaysian forced a deciding game.
Lee Zii Jia dictated the rallies early on in the third game and surged to a 9-2 lead. With his back to the wall, Sen played a cross-court smash to make it 9-3.
The world No. 7, however, led by five points, with the scoreboard reading 11-6 at the interval. He then stretched the lead to 16-8. Sen could hardly recover from that deficit and went on to lose the match.
This was Lakshya Sen’s second loss against the Malaysian. He had beaten Lee Zii Jia at the All England Open earlier this year.
Lakshya Sen entered the bronze medal match after suffering a heartbreaking loss to Tokyo 2020 gold medallist Viktor Axelsen of Denmark in the last four. In the quarter-finals, the unseeded Lakshya Sen defeated Chinese Taipei’s Chou Tien-chen in a hard-fought three-game encounter.
As a result, he became the first Indian shuttler to reach the badminton men’s singles semi-finals at the Summer Games. Parupalli Kashyap and Kidambi Srikanth previously reached the quarter-finals at London 2012 and Rio 2016, respectively.
Lakshya Sen, on his Olympic debut, topped his men’s singles group, by beating reigning All England champion and world No. 4 Jonatan Christie. He also got the better of his compatriot HS Prannoy in the round of 16.