Tokyo: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Ayane Kurihara who was regarded as Japan’s most beautiful female badminton player, is set to retire at the end of 2019.
The 30-year-old who made the 2016 Rio Olympics mixed doubles quarter-finals with partner Kenta Kazuno, but eventually lost to Zhang Nan/Zhao Yunlei 14-21, 12-21, has landed a job in a Japanese company and is expected to start working at April next year.
In the 2019 S/J Badminton League that concluded on Sunday, Kurihara and her team – Nihon Unisys, were able to win the women’s team title and pocketed 3 million Yen by beating Kumamoto Saishunkan 2-1 in Takaoka City.
Ayane Kurihara who is currently ranked World No. 35 in mixed doubles with partner Kohei Gondo, were originally aiming to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, they have been struggling and were defeated mostly in the first or second rounds of all tournaments they’ve competed in 2019. Given that Japan has Yuta Watanabe/Arisa Higashino currently ranked mixed doubles World No. 3 alongside Yuki Kaneko/Misaki Matsutomo and Takuro Hoki/Wakana Nagahara who currently ranked World No. 23 and World No. 25 respectively, it’s not realistic for Kurihara/Gondo to make the cut to qualify for the Olympics. Furthermore, she has been dropped from the 2020 Japanese national team after she was defeated the second round of the All-Japan Championships.
Kurihara began playing badminton at age 9, and became a member of the Japan national badminton team at the age of 19. She started as a women’s singles and won the 2010 Russian Open and 2010 Malaysia International before switching to women’s doubles and to mixed doubles.
Meanwhile, in the 2019 S/J League men’s team final, team Tonami which featured World No. 10 men’s singles Kanta Tsuneyama, World No. 3 men’s doubles pair Takeshi Kamura/Keigo Sonoda and World No. 16 men’s singles player Kenta Nishimoto was able to win their fourth consecutive S/J League title by defeating the NTT East team which was spearheaded by World No. 1 men’s singles player Kento Momota, with overall result 2-1.
