Olympic silver medallist, Pusarla V Sindhu, led a trio of women onto the BWF Athletes’ Commission as voting for four places on the representative body took place in Gold Coast, Australia, yesterday.

The Indian athlete (featured image; centre) topped the ballot with 129 votes with Kirsty Gilmour of Scotland (featured image; right) placing third overall with 103 votes. Both will serve four-year terms along with Germany’s Marc Zwiebler who received 108 votes. These three replace Yuhan Tan (Belgium), Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus (Denmark) and Greysia Polii (Indonesia) who have concluded their four-year terms.

Lithuania’s Akvilė Stapusaityte (25 votes) is the third woman elected to the Commission. However, Stapusaityte (featured image; left) will only serve two years as she will finish the term of Tang Yuanting. The Chinese player became a member of the Athletes’ Commission in 2015 but resigned following her retirement from badminton last year, thus leaving a casual vacancy on the Commission.

Regulations stipulate the male with highest number of votes; the female with the highest number of votes and then the person with the next highest number of votes (male or female) win the three places. By virtue of Tang’s resignation, the female with the next-highest number of votes was required to replace her.

Voting took place on the sidelines of the TOTAL BWF Sudirman Cup 2017 in Gold Coast today as well as via email during the past month. A total of 183 valid votes were cast. There were two invalid votes.

The new Athletes’ Commission members will join Shintaro Ikeda of Japan; Koen Ridder of the Netherlands and India’s Saina Nehwal on the players’ representative body.

RESULTS OF THE BWF ATHLETES’ COMMISSION ELECTION 2017