Dan Bethell and Pramod Bhagat shake hands after their final match

26 February, 2024

Dan Bethell roared to his first world medal since 2019 with silver at the BWF Para Badminton World Championships in Thailand.

The current men’s SL3 world number one was eying up his maiden world title but came short after falling 14-21, 21-15, 21-14 to India’s Pramod Baghat in the final.

Bethell cruised through his group matches in Pattaya before a dominating 21-1 21-5 performance against Australia’ Kenneth Adlawan in the round of 16.

Into high intensity knockout badminton, Bethell’s toughest battle of the championships so far came in his semi-final against India’s Kumar Nitesh.

After winning the first game, the Paralympic silver medallist was forced into a third but ultimately came out on top, taking the spoils 21-18 20-22 21-14.

Semi-final victory set up a battle for the ages as Bethell faced Bhagat in an exact replay of the 2019 Worlds and Tokyo 2020 Paralympic final.

The Englishman started off strong, winning the first game 21-14 but the tide soon turned and Bhagat soared to the title, winning the final two games 21-15 21-14.

Silver marked Bethell’s third singles world championship medal, after silver in 2019 and bronze in 2015.

Elsewhere, Krysten Coombs and Rachel Choong put up fights in the quarterfinals of the men’s and women’s SH6 singles.

Coombs was trailing after his opening game against France’s Charles Noakes but forced a third in the tight contest.

The Paralympic bronze medallist eventually fell to a 21-13 20-22 21-13 defeat.

Whilst Choong stormed through her round of 16 match before losing out on a spot in the semifinals to China’s Feng-mei Li.

Owen Kilburn and Gobi Ranganathan clinched group stage victory over the Czech Republic’s Lukas Kyncl and Kamil Snadjar in the men’s WH1-WH2 doubles.

Ranganathan also linked up with Heidi Manninen in the mixed doubles group stages whilst Sharon Jones-Barnes took part in the women’s WH1 singles and doubles.

Recent posts

Back to news