Satwik-Chirag wins the French Open doubles title for the second time

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty won the French Open 2024 badminton men’s doubles title with a win over Chinese Taipei’s Lee Jhe-Huei and Yang Po-Hsuan in the final on Sunday. This was the first title of the 2024 badminton season for Chirag-Satwik and the duo’s second French Open title. Bharatiya won the French Open in 2022 and were runners-up in 2019.

Playing at the Arena Porte de la Chapelle, the venue for badminton at the Paris 2024 Olympics, the top-ranked badminton pair beat their world No. 16 opponents with a scoreline of 21-11, 21-17 in 36 minutes.

“The key was to be steady. They can be quite a formidable pair. They play some really attacking badminton. So, you need to keep your calm and keep at it and not really think that ‘oh if I lift it, they’ll smash back at me. We were ready for that. We knew that they would come all guns blazing. But we had to stick to our plan and that’s what we did,” Chirag explained according to media reports.

This was Satwik and Chirag’s seventh title on the BWF World Tour. The Bharatiya pair bagged the Swiss Open, the Indonesia Open and the Korea Open last year. Besides, they competed in their third straight final on the BWF World Tour this year. They suffered setbacks in the Malaysia Open and India Open finals before winning the French Open.

The Bharatiya shuttlers did not drop a single game at the French Open, which also served as a Paris 2024 Olympic test event. Results at the French Open, a BWF Super 750 event, also counted towards players’ qualifying rankings for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

The next assignment for top-tier Bharatiya players will be the All England Open BWF Super 1000 badminton tournament starting on Tuesday. Orleans Masters, a BWF Super 300 event, also gets underway next week.

Satwik and Chirag proved third time lucky and their stellar show this week only reconfirmed chief coach Pullela Gopichand’s assertion that the duo will be the favourites to win Paris Olympics gold.