Carolina Marin promised to return to her dominant form after losing to Akane Yamaguchi

• Carolina Marin loses her bid for a record fourth world title to Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi.
• The Spaniard missed last year’s worlds in her home city of Huelva because of an injury.
• All four top seeds in the women’s competition all move on to the semi-finals.

Carolina Marin, a badminton player from Spain, lost her bid for a record fourth world title to Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi on Friday. However, she said she would get back to being the best she could be.

Marin is getting used to competing again after getting a terrible knee injury last year that kept her out of action for a year and made her miss the Olympics in Tokyo.

She came back to the court in May of this year, but current world number one Yamaguchi beat her 21-17, 21-17 in the quarterfinals of the world championships in Tokyo.

Marin said that she “felt quite good” physically, but that she “made many mistakes in my strategy” as Yamaguchi wore her down in front of a home crowd that was ready to cheer.

The Spaniard said she would “keep looking forward” as she tries to get back to the form that made her a three-time world champion and an Olympic gold medalist at the 2016 Rio Games.

“I know that if I keep going, if I keep practising hard, I will get back to my best level,” said the 29-year-old, who missed last year’s worlds in her home city of Huelva because of an injury.

“It’s tough to lose in a quarter-final at the worlds but this is the life and times. Sometimes we need to learn about losing.”

With Yamaguchi’s win, the four top seeds in the women’s competition all moved on to the semi-finals.

An Se-young of South Korea, who beat China’s Han Yue in a 21-14, 15-21, 22-20 thriller, will play the top player from Japan. Chen Yufei and Tai Tzu-ying will play a rematch of the Olympic final from last year.

Chen, who won gold in Tokyo last year, beat Canada’s Michelle Li 21-18, 21-17, and Taiwan’s Tai beat Thailand’s Busanan Ongbamrungphan 21-16, 21-9 to move on.

On the men’s side, defending champion Loh Kean Yew of Singapore said he would try to “improve everything” after losing to Thailand’s Kunlavut Vitidsarn 21-12, 17-21, 21-8.

Number eight seed Loh said that the drift in Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium was hard for him to deal with, but he promised to come back stronger.

“Everything I am good at, I need to become better — whatever I’m not so good at, I need to improve that as well,” he said.

Vitidsarn will play Zhao Junpeng of China in the semi-finals after the unseeded 26-year-old beat H.S. Prannoy of India 19-21, 21-6, 21-18.

Zhao lost in the quarterfinals of last year’s world championships, so he was happy to go one better this year.

“I think I did a lot better in my training and also mentally,” Zhao said. In the last round, he beat Malaysia’s highly regarded number five seed Lee Zii Jia.

In the other semi-final, the number four seed from Taiwan, Chou Tien-chen, will play against the hot favourite, Viktor Axelsen. Chou Tien-chen beat Jonatan Christie from Indonesia in three sets, 14-21, 21-11, and 22-20.

Axelsen beat Anthony Sinisuka Ginting of Indonesia in two easy games, 21-10 and 21-10, to keep his streak of winning every match in straight games going.

“I wanted to play a perfect game plan,” said world number one Axelsen.

“I wanted to do my absolute best on each side of the court and I managed to do so. I was fully focused in there today.”

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