Tokyo Olympics: Pakistan's Mahoor Shahzad loses badminton opening game

According to details, Mahoor was outplayed by Akane, who is also world number five in global badminton rankings.

Mahoor suffered a 21-3 and 21-8 defeat with Yamaguchi taking only 10 minutes to win the first game. The Pakistani badminton champ tried giving hard time to her opponent in the second, but only to lose that too by a score of 21-8.

The Japanese player scored eight consecutive points in the first game and seven on in the second game.

Mahoor will now face Britain’s Kirsty Gilmour in her next match scheduled to be played on July 27.

After a delay of almost a year, Japan’s capital is hosting Tokyo Olympics. There will be a record 339 medal events held across 33 sports, with five new sports - and 34 new events in total. The five new sports are karate, sport climbing, skateboarding, baseball/softball and surfing. Baseball and softball are not new sports but they were discontinued in 2008.

New events have been introduced to the boxing, canoe slalom, canoe sprint, cycling, rowing and swimming programmers, while there are new mixed-gender events including a 4x100m mixed medley relay in swimming and a mixed relay in triathlon.

Around 48% of athletes participating at the Tokyo Olympics are women, which is a record figure.

The Olympics have been widely criticized by Japanese public due to Tokyo being in the state of emergency following spike in coronavirus cases. Majority of people wanted government to cancel or postpone the games again.