Summary Spain's Carolina Marin won the Olympic badminton gold on Friday by beating P.V. Sindhu of India.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - Spain s Carolina Marin shrieked her way to a historic Olympic badminton gold on Friday as she beat India s P.V. Sindhu in three games to become the first non-Asian women s singles champion.
World champion Marin won 19-21, 21-12, 21-15 to break an Asian hegemony dating back to badminton s advent as an Olympic sport in 1992, while Sindhu became the first Indian woman ever to win a Games silver medal.
"I m a little Spaniard that broke the Asian world. My dream has come true," Marin, the 23-year-old world number one, told reporters after grabbing a rare medal for a European country in the sport.
Marin, who celebrated almost every point she won by screeching at the top of her voice, lost the first game but stormed back to dominate the second and third games.
Marin was told off by the umpire on several occasions about her screaming, while she and Sindhu also engaged in a series of discussions about changing shuttles.
Marin claimed it was part of her strategy to keep the shuttles new and quick, while Sindhu wanted to stick with older ones.
"She didn t want to change the shuttle because she wanted me to lose focus," left-hander Marin said of her opponent.
"It was a little bit slow and sometimes you have to control everything on court," she added.
The third and final game was locked at 10-10 before Marin went 14-10 ahead.
It was a gap that Sindhu could not bridge as the Spaniard went to 20-15 before finishing off her Indian counterpart in an engrossing encounter.
She became the first non-Chinese winner since the Atlanta 1996 Games, when South Korean Bang Soo-Hyun struck gold. Indonesian Susi Susanti won at Barcelona 1992, badminton s debut as an Olympic sport.
Sindhu s hard-fought silver was India s second medal of the Rio Olympics after female wrestler Sakshi Malik claimed bronze on Wednesday.
The 21-year-old played down the effects of her opponents on-court vocal exercises.
"I was really prepared for everything because I knew it would happen. It ll happen every time. It s always there. I didn t get really annoyed. It s all part of the game," she said.
Sindhu also went one better than her Indian team-mate Saina Nehwal, who won bronze at London 2012.
"It was Carolina s day today and that s it. I never thought I would make it to the final. Overall it was a very good match and I m on cloud nine right now," she added.
Japan s Nozomi Okuhara was awarded bronze after being given a walkover against China s defending champion Li Xuerui, who was injured in her semi-final defeat to Marin on Thursday.
"If I could have got it by actually playing that would have been better but I have achieved my goal of winning an Olympic medal here, said Okuhara.
