Daily Times

TOKYO: Japan’s Kento Momota was once badminton’s undisputed king but his career has gone into free fall ever since a car crash more than two years ago which left him badly hurt. There are now severe doubts that the 27-year-old former two-times world champion — who was embroiled in a gambling scandal earlier in his career — will ever reach the top again. Momota’s world was turned upside down in January 2020 when the vehicle taking him to Kuala Lumpur airport crashed hours after he won the Malaysia Masters, killing the driver and leaving the player with a fractured eye socket. He was out of action for a year and is now a shadow of his former self — the left-handed ace flopped at the Tokyo Olympics and has lost in the first round of four of the five singles tournaments he has entered this year. Momota won a record-breaking 11 titles in 2019, losing just six of the 73 matches he played and looking every inch a legend in the making. Then came the crash which left him with double vision and required surgery on a bone near his eye.