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Much-awaited BWF rankings seal 7 Indian shuttlers Rio dreams

Thursday’s rankings were used to determine the Olympic qualifiers in each of the five categories -- men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles -- from the points accumulated in the period between May 4, 2015 and May 1st, 2016.

Four years ago, five Indians had qualified at London Olympics. This year, London Olympics bronze medallist Saina would be representing India in her third Games, while the women’s doubles pair of Jwala and Ashwini Ponnappa will also play their second Olympics in August.

Besides, K Srikanth and P V Sindhu earned their maiden Olympic berths in men’s singles and women’s events respectively. For the first time, India will have two women’s singles players playing 
in the Olympics.

Other countries with two representatives in women’s singles are China (Li Xuerui, Wang Yihan); Japan (Nozomi Okuhara and Akane Yamaguchi) and Korea (Sung Ji Hyun and Bae Yeon Ju). This will also be the first time that an Indian men’s doubles pair of Manu Attri and B Summeth Reddy will be representing the country in Olympics. A total of 172 shuttlers made the cut on Thursday for the Rio Olympics, where there will be slight change in qualification quotas for men’s and women’s singles with a maximum quota for singles players from the same National Olympic Committee (NOC) being two places if both players are ranked in the world’s top 16.

In London Olympics, three singles players from an NOC could qualify if they were in the top four of the world rankings. 
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