We want to break into top-four: Kim & Anders

World No.9 Kim Astrup and Anders Skaarup Rasmussen want to break into the top-four but the Danish men's doubles pair is wary of playing too many badminton tournaments for Olympic qualification, which, they feel, can take a toll.

Kim and Anders bagged the biggest title of their career at the China Open World Tour Super 1000 tournament in 2018 and achieved a career-best ranking of world no.6 late this year. The two are in the national capital for ongoing India Open.

"We want to stay inside the top 8 and take it step by step to reach the top four. But we have to be 100 per cent throughout the year to reach our goal and we hope to qualify for Olympics also," Kim, who along with Anders, finished runners-up in the last edition, told PTI.

The Olympic qualification period starts April 29 with the Badminton World Federation (BWF) ranking on April 30, 2020 being the cut-off point for allocation of spots for the Tokyo Games.

According to the rules, NOCs can enter a maximum of two doubles pairs if both are ranked in the top eight, while the remaining are entitled to one entry each until the quota of 16 highest-ranked pairs is filled.

Talking about the importance of scheduling in the Olympic qualification year, Anders said: "It takes a toll on you, as you are away from families. In Denmark, we don't have that many periods where we can train hard. We didn't perform well in All England and had just two weeks to prepare for this tournament.

"So you don't have time to take, say, one month's break now unless you want to skip some tournaments. As the ranking is important, everybody is playing almost everything, so you have to invest in playing a lot of tournaments to keep up and move forward."
"But we also don't want to go to Olympics at no 16. We have to be competitive and have fun playing. Right now there are 10 men's doubles pairs who can win each tournament and not only one as we have seen in All England, so just focus on ourselves and move forward."