Gilmour off to a solid start at European Championships

Scotland’s Kirsty Gilmour opened her campaign at the 2021 European Championships with a solid win over Sabrina Jaquet in Kiev yesterday.

The fourth seed beat the Swiss 21-10 21-15 at the Palace of Sports to set up a clash with Bulgarian Linda Zetchiri later today as she looks to add to her already impressive haul of European medals.

Gilmour won silver at the European Championships in 2016 and 2017 as well as silver at the 2019 multi-sport European Games and her route to the final this year has been eased somewhat by the withdrawal of second seed Mia Blichfeldt of Denmark.

But to go one step further and claim that illusive gold medal, it’s likely Gilmour would have to beat top seed and world No. 4 Carolina Marin.

In the men’s doubles Chris and Matt Grimley won their first round match in impressive style, comprehensively beating Ireland’s Joshua Magee and Paul Reynolds 21-11 21-13.

But the twins will have to be on top form today if they want to reach the quarter-finals with German fifth seeds Mark Lamsfuss and Marvin Seidel standing in their way.

Chris Grimley and Eleanor O’Donnell scored a good opening win in the mixed doubles over Norwegian duo Carl Christian Mork and Solvar Flaten Joergensen yesterday but lost their second round match against seventh seeds Sam and Chloe Magee of Ireland this morning.

Adam Hall and Julie MacPherson went out in the first round to strong Danish opposition, with Niclas Nohr and Amalie Magelund winning 21-19 21-18 and MacPherson and Ciara Torrance also lost out in the first round of the women’s doubles to Russia’s Anastasiia Akchurina and Olga Morozova.

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Photo credit: Badminton Europe/Yevhen Lieskov