In the semifinals on Wednesday, the 18-year-old lost the first set to Korean Kang Ji Wook, but bounced back to win 19-21 21-17 21-17.
HS Prannoy is within one win of a gold medal at the Youth Olympics in Singapore. In the semifinals on Wednesday, the 18-year-old lost the first set to Korean Kang Ji Wook, but bounced back to win 19-21 21-17 21-17. He will now face Thailand’s Pisit Poodchalat, who got past Loh Wei Sheng of Malaysia.
Prannoy’s win was especially creditable as he had lost
to the same player at the World Juniors in Mexico in April. Prannoy had earned his place in the semifinals with a draining 51-minute victory over Hsieh Feng Tse of Chinese Taipei.
Having split the first two games, the third was neck and neck all the way until Hsieh earned the marginal advantage at 19-18.
Prannoy fought to level and force a deuce. He finally clinched it at 24-22. “This is the best crowd I have ever played in front of,” Prannoy told website Badzine.info. On his semifinal opponent, he had said: “I’m very confident that I can beat anybody. There’s not much gap between any of us.” As it turned out, those weren’t empty words.
“It was a great victory for Prannoy. He was attacking and his backhand looked good. He lost the first game but he bounced back and played well in crucial moments,” national coach Pullela Gopichand said.
Meanwhile, Yuki Bhambri continued his rampaging run and beat Ireland’s John Morrissey 6-4 6-4 to set up a semifinal clash with Damir Dzumhur of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In archery, Atanu Das and Seema Verma shot 637 and 635 for an identical fifth position in the junior men’s and women’s individual ranking round respectively. Seema then spanked Sorsa Tanja of Finland 6-0 in the 1/16 elimination round but it was all over for Atanu in the men’s elimination round as Hautamaki Joni of Finland edge past him 6-5.
In the mixed team 1/16 elimination, Atanu and Miranda Leek of USA failed to get past the pair of Maud Custers and Shahnazaryan Vasil and lost 4-6. Seema was unlucky in the mixed team 1/16 elimination as she and her partner Linster lost 1-3 to Wojnicka Aleksandra and Yilmaz Yaqiz. Boys basketball team lost 20-33 to Greece in the preliminary Group A match.
—With agency inputs
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