Indonesia's Jonatan Christie plays a shot against India's Lakshya Sen in their men's singles badminton group stage match during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at Porte de la Chapelle Arena in Paris on July 31, 2024. (Photo by Luis TATO / AFP)
AS the Paris Olympics badminton tournament rises to a crescendo with exciting semi-finals and the finals, one name is glaringly missing from the headlines.
Where are the Indonesians?
Players from the badminton powerhouse have had a uncharacteristically disappointing outing in Paris, with five of their six representatives eliminated.
Only Gregoria Mariska is still left in the women’s singles quarter-finals. If she loses to Thailand’s World No. 21 Ratchanok Intanon, Indonesia face the prospect of coming home without a medal for only the second time in their history, after the 2012 London Games.
The Indonesians’ poor showing comes less than a year after the South-East Asian giants finished empty-handed for the first time at the Asian Games in Hangzhou two years ago. The nightmare outing in the Asiad should have been a wake-up call but the Indonesian slump is continuing.
In the men’s singles, it was a forgettable outing for world No. 4 Jonatan Christie and world No. 9 Anthony Ginting, who were both surprisingly eliminated in the group stages.
Reigning All-England and Asian champion Jonatan fell 18-21, 12-21 to India’s 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games gold medallist Lakshya Sen while 2021 Tokyo Games bronze medallist Anthony went down 19-21, 21-17, 15-21 to a spirited Toma Popov of France.
It was the first time that there have been no Indonesians in the last 16 of the men’s singles in the Olympics.
In the women’s doubles, defending champion Apriyani Rahayu could not repeat her heroics of 2021 with former partner Greysia Polli. She struggled in a tough group along with debutant Siti Fadia Ramadhanti.
World No. 8 Apriyani-Siti Fadia lost all their matches in straight games against China’s world No. 1 Chen Qingchen-Jia Yifan, Japan’s former two-time world champions Mayu Matsumoto-Wakana Nagahara and Malaysia’s world No. 12 Pearly Tan-M. Thinaah.
World No. 13 mixed doubles pair Rinov Rivaldy-Pitha Haningtyas were also placed in a difficult group and could not maintain their form after beating South Koreans Kim Won-ho-Jeong Na-eun in three games. They lost their other two matches against China’s world No. 1 Zheng Siwei-Huang Yaqiong and French duo Thom Gicquel-Delphine Delrue.
In the men’s doubles, world No. 7 Fajar Alfian-Rian Arfdianto made it into the quarter-finals before narrowly going down 22-24, 20-22 to Chinese top seeds Liang Weikeng-Wang Chang.
