Japan Badminton Player Kento Momota The two-time world champions, who lost their place at the 2024 Paris Olympics, will face Japan for the last time in the Thomas Cup from April 28 to May 5, 2024.
Japan Badminton Player Kento Momota Hangs Racket After Thomas Cup 2024
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Japan Badminton Player Kento Momota of Japan will retire from international badminton after the 2024 Thomas Cup. At the age of 29, Momota said he could no longer return to the level of competence he had before a fatal car accident 4 years ago.
“I took this decision because I felt that I had reached the physical and mental limits in an attempt to return to being the best in the world,” The Straits Times quoted the former world number one as saying.
Japan Badminton Player Kento Momota was the king of badminton when he topped the BWF rankings. He won 11 titles in 2019 and lost only six times in the 73 matches he played that year.
Japan Badminton Player Kento Momota was at one time the top male player in badminton, in 2019 73 matches he played this year winning 11 titles and losing only 6 of the .
But his career took a drastic downturn the following year. In January 2020, the conveyance that took him to Kuala Lumpur airport had a fatal accident. The driver died and Momota needed surgery to mending a cracked eye socket.
He took a year off and returned to the court, but the injury left him with double vision and he struggled to regain his former performance, though he did manage to win two tournaments.
“At the time of the accident, I would be lying if I said I didn’t think to myself, ‘Why me?'” Japan Badminton Player Kento Momota told a news convention in Tokyo on Thursday, AFP reported.
Now ranked 52nd and having missed out on a spot at the Paris Olympics, Japan Badminton Player Kento Momota will retire from the Japanese national team after the Thomas and Uber Cup in China later this month.
After that, he will just play in domestic competitions in Japan and not on the Badminton World Tour.
Smiling throughout the press conference, Momota said he had no remorse about retiring from top-level badminton. He said that he would like to publicity badminton in Japan and thanked the people involved in the sport for helping him through his darkest days.
“There was a lot of trouble and it wore me down, but I didn’t want to blame the tough times on the accident,” he added. “I wanted to bounce back from it, and that position of mind—toward with the backing of the people around me—has at least approved me to get a foothold.”
Momota had his eyes on the Paris Olympics this year, but his national ranking was not good enough to earn him a spot on the Japanese team. He was disabled to play in the 2016 Rio Olympics after being banned from selection for gambling in an illegal casino.