Denmark Open: Iwanaga/Nakanishi Step Forward for Japan

The emergence of Rin Iwanaga/Kie Nakanishi as one of the world’s best performing women’s pairs has come at a good time for Japanese badminton.

Women’s doubles in the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’ is going through a period of transition following the split of former world No.1s Yuki Fukushima/Sayaka Hirota and the retirement of Wakana Nagahara, who won two world titles with Mayu Matsumoto.

Iwanaga/Nakanishi’s 21-18 21-14 win over Paris 2024 Olympic silver medallists Liu Sheng Shu/Tan Ning in the VICTOR Denmark Open 2024 final cements their second position on the HSBC Race to Finals rankings.

Post-victory, Nakanishi acknowledged their progress over the last 12 months.

“This is our first Super 750 title and we are proud of it,” she said. “We’ve been looking at other pairs thinking they may be better than us. You can say this is a confidence-booster to reach the next level.”

Iwanaga/Nakanishi are only the second non-Chinese pair – Pearly Tan/Thinaah Muralitharan being the other – to beat Liu and Tan post-Paris. It is also their second win over the new world No.1s in three encounters.

“It’s kind of funny our other win happened at Denmark Open too last year. We were more prepared this time. We studied them and that contributed to the result,” said Iwanaga.

Having made good on their start-of-season vow to grab a spot at the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals in Hangzhou, Iwanaga added: “We always talk about winning as many points as we can. Even when we lost, we kept believing our hard work would pay off because we really wanted to play in China.”

The triumph in Odense maintained their 100 per cent record in finals this year. The world No.6s won the Spain Masters, Malaysia Masters, US Open and Canada Open in the opening seven months of the season, continuing their upward trajectory after bagging their first HSBC BWF World Tour crown at the Syed Modi India International in December.

“There’s no magic tea or potion. It’s all mindset,” said Iwanaga on what spurred their rise to become Japan’s torchbearers in women’s doubles alongside Nami Matsuyama/Chiharu Shida.

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