THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
January 4, 2021 at 16:10 JST
Kento Momota plays at the men’s singles final at the Badminton All Japan Championships in Tokyo on Dec. 27. (Pool)
Kento Momota, the world’s top-ranked men’s singles badminton player, tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Jan. 3.
Momota, 26, was confirmed infected in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test he took at Narita Airport in Chiba Prefecture just before he was to board a flight to Thailand with the rest of Japan's national team for a competition.
The Nippon Badminton Association (NBA) announced the news the same day.
The NBA subsequently canceled the team's flight, though all the team's other players and staff assembled at the airport for the trip tested negative.
Twenty-three national team players, including Momota, and 11 staff gathered at the Ajinomoto National Training Center on Jan. 2, and the national team went to the airport the following morning, the NBA said.
Momota had not displayed any symptoms of COVID-19 before taking the PCR test.
Momota captured the top spot at the Badminton All Japan Championships in December. The national team was slated to participate in the Thailand Open starting on Jan. 12, as well as other competitions.
The overseas games would have been Momota's first since January 2020 when he was injured in a car accident after a match in Malaysia.
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