NEW DELHI -- Seven Indian badminton players, including Saina Nehwal and K Srikanth, officially earned qualification berths for the Rio Olympics after the Badminton World Federation (BWF) world rankings were released on Thursday.
The rankings were used to determine the Olympic qualifiers in each of the five categories - men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles -- from the points accumulated between May 4, 2015 and May 1, 2016.
London Olympics bronze medallist Nehwal will be representing India in her third Games,while K Srikanth and P V Sindhu earned their first Olympic berths in the men's singles and women's events. For the first time, India will have two women's singles players in the event.
The women's doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa will play their second Olympics, while in another first for the country, the men's doubles team of Manu Attri and B Summeth Reddy also qualified.
The other countries with two representatives in women's singles are China (Li Xuerui, Wang Yihan), Japan (Nozomi Okuhara and Akane Yamaguchi) and Korea (Sung Ji Hyun and Bae Yeon Ju).
A total of 172 badminton players have qualified Rio. For the men's and women's singles, a maximum of two players from a National Olympic Committee can make it under qualification quotas if both are ranked in the world's top 16.
Five Indian badminton players had qualified for the London Olympics in 2012.