2016 All England Open Badminton Championships: Top 5 women contenders

All England Championships are scheduled to commence from 8th March 2016The 2016 All England Open Badminton Championships, the world’s oldest and most prestigious badminton tournament, is scheduled to take place at the Barclaycard Arena, Birmingham from 8th March 2016 to 13th March 2016. This would be first of BWF superseries events to take place in this calendar year and has a total purse of US $550,000.Badminton’s premier tournament, All England is a Badminton World Federation Superseries Premier event, its significance is proven with only four other events being given this status. We analyse the top 5 contenders in the women’s singles of the All England Open Championships: Note: Wang Yihan, PV Sindhu and Wang Shixian are the dark horses for this year’s prestigious tournament.

#5 Li Xuerui

Nationality: Chinese

Age: 25 years

BWF Singles Ranking: 3

All England Championship Seed: 3

Chinese international Li Xuerui will be hoping to win her 2nd All England World Championship singles title as she clinched the women’s singles title at the 2012 All England Championships by defeating her Chinese counterpart Wang Yihan 21-13, 21-19 in the finals.

On contrary to other contenders, Li Xuerui has already won her first title of this calendar year, she went on to win the 2016 German open Grand Prix singles title earlier this year. The 25-year old shuttler has an Olympic Gold as well in her list honours, she clinched the Gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics in an all-Chinese final against Wang Yihan.

She will have to face a tough challenge in Chinese Taipei international Hsu Ya-ching in the first round of the tournament.