KB News Desk
An Se-young is four weeks away from reaching 100 consecutive weeks as the world’s No. 1 women’s singles badminton player.
The South Korean remained atop the Badminton World Federation rankings released Tuesday with 117,787 points, extending her current run at No. 1 to 96 weeks.
An holds a comfortable lead over Japan’s Akane Yamaguchi, who is second with 104,576 points, and China’s Wang Zhiyi, who is third with 102,689.
The BWF rankings are based on a player’s 10 highest-scoring tournaments over the previous 52 weeks. All 10 results currently counting toward An’s total are tournament victories, including two Super 1000 titles, five Super 750 titles, the World Tour Finals and the Asian Championships.
An first became world No. 1 in August 2023, becoming the first South Korean woman to hold the top singles ranking since 1996 Olympic champion Bang Soo-hyun.
She briefly fell to No. 2 for two weeks in October 2024 while taking time off after the Paris Olympics but regained the top ranking on Oct. 22, 2024, and has held it since.
An is effectively assured of reaching 100 consecutive weeks at No. 1 because neither Yamaguchi nor Wang can overtake her during the next four weeks.
An is scheduled to compete at the world championships in New Delhi and the China Masters in Shenzhen during that span. Even if she loses in the first round of both tournaments, she can lose no more than 800 ranking points.
Yamaguchi can gain a maximum of 2,800 points from the two events, while Wang can add as many as 7,950. Neither would be enough to erase An’s lead.
(This article was produced with the assistance of AI. — Ed.)
