Youth Olympics: Shuttler Lakshya stumbles in final hurdle, settles for silver

Image Courtesy: Twitter/@lakshya_sen

Promising Indian shuttler Lakshya Sen settled for a silver medal after he lost the men's singles summit clash against Li Shifeng of China in straight games in the Youth Olympics.

Sen, the reigning junior Asian champion, lost 15-21 19-21 in a 42-minute final match to bag the silver. He had beaten Shifeng in straight games in the quarterfinals of the Asian Championships in July but on Friday evening, it was the turn of the Chinese to turn the tables on the 17-year-old.

Congratulations to Shifeng Li for the @YOG2018 Gold Medal.. he played an excellent match. I hope we play many more matches against each other. Personally, I am disappointed with my performance in the finals but had an amazing experience at the #YouthOlympics pic.twitter.com/FK355LfvUx

— Lakshya Sen (@lakshya_sen) October 13, 2018

In both the games, Shifeng led all through and Sen was playing catch-up, eventually failing to succeed. In the first game, Shifeng took an early lead and raced to 14-5 in no time.

Sen made a fine recovery to narrow down the gap to 13-16 but he could not sustain it and Shifeng went ahead 18-13 and then made it 20-14 to have six-game points. Though Sen saved one game point, the Chinese won the next one to pocket the first game in 17 minutes.

The second game was a closer fight than the first but the Chinese was leading all the time. Shifeng was ahead 8-7 initially but the gap widened to 12-7 before Sen made it 11-14. The three-point gap remained for some time before the Chinese made it 18-14 and then 19-14.

Sen made a last-ditch effort to save the match by winning three straight points but Shifeng still made it 20-17 to have three match points. Sen was still not throwing the towel as he reeled off two straight points to make it 19-20 and just one point away from a deuce. But his Chinese opponent was a hard nut to crack as Shifeng won the final point to clinch the match and the gold.

This was India's fourth silver along with three gold in the ongoing Youth Olympics.