Deprived of Rio for gambling and almost forced into retirement after a car accident last year, the world number 1 in the discipline will finally make his Olympic debut at 26.
It’s never too late to experience the Olympics. Especially when these take place at home. Such is the fate of Kento Momota who is one of the greatest hopes for a gold medal in the host country of the Tokyo Games. But he says he is simply happy to participate in the competition after fracturing his eye socket in a car accident in January 2020. The world number 1 in badminton then declared that his “spirit had almost broken“, while trying to recover from the accident that killed the driver of the vehicle, a few hours after winning the Masters of Kuala Lumpur. Plagued by vision problems, he had to have surgery, which delayed his return to competition and made him fear that his career would end prematurely. “I thought about it“, he admitted.
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But Momota has made a full recovery and is heading into her very first Olympics as a favourite. Before his accident, he was almost without rival and had thus won eleven titles in 2019, including a world title. That year, the southpaw lost just six of the 73 matches he played. But Momota’s rise to the top followed a dramatic fall from grace a few months before the Rio Olympics: he admitted gambling at an underground casino in April 2016 and was then suspended by the Japanese federation. He returned a year later, then knocking out Olympic champion Chen Long for the Asian title in April 2018 before moving up the rankings. “I still have remorsefor what happened before Rio andfor those who supported me when i wasn’t playing, i want to pay them back somehow in tokyo“, he said at the end of 2019.
And a positive test for Covid-19 in addition
But then came the accident and a pandemic that led to the cancellation of badminton tournaments around the world. Momota played her first match in nearly a year at the All Japan Championships in Tokyo last December and started tentatively before beating Kanta Tsuneyama in the final. His hopes of returning to international competition were then dashed when he tested positive for coronavirus at the airport in January, as the Japanese team prepared to depart for the Thailand Open. The pressure to win at home is “huge“, he said, recalling that he wanted to honor the 18,500 victims of the triple disaster of March 11, 2011 (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Fukushima where he grew up). “How confident am I? Well, someone holding back wouldn’t win, so I say 100%. I can win 100% gold“, he warned.
