Kirsty Gilmour (born 21 September 1993) is a Scottish badminton player who has represented both Scotland and Great Britain.[3][4]
Career
Gilmour won the silver medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, losing out to Michelle Li of Canada in the final and becoming the first Scottish player to reach the women's singles finals at the Commonwealth Games.[5] She jointly won Scottish Young Sports Personality of the Year 2012 with swimmer Craig Benson.[6]
Making a second appearance at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Gilmour, the eleventh seed, won her opening match against the unseeded Sabrina Jaquet in straight games. However, she lost her second match against the world No. 28 Linda Zetchiri 21–12, 17–21, 16–21, thereby making an exit at the group stage.[8]
In 2017, she made it back into the final round of the European Championship in Kolding, Denmark but her pace was stopped by defending champion Carolina Marín with score 14–21, 12–21. Gilmour earned a silver medal.[9]
At the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, she again went out in the group stages after winning her opening match against Keisha Fatimah Az Zahra from Azerbaijan
[12] then losing to China's number six seed He Bingjiao.[13][14]
The BWF World Tour, which was announced on 19 March 2017 and implemented in 2018,[16] is a series of elite badminton tournaments sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF). The BWF World Tour is divided into levels of World Tour Finals, Super 1000, Super 750, Super 500, Super 300 (part of the HSBC World Tour), and the BWF Tour Super 100.[17]
Gilmour is openly lesbian[19] and uses she/her and they/them pronouns. She is currently the only openly LGBT badminton player to be ranked in the top 100 of any event and is one of very few openly LGBT professional badminton players.[20]
^Sukumar, Dev (10 January 2018). "Action-Packed Season Ahead!". Badminton World Federation. Archived from the original on 13 January 2018. Retrieved 15 January 2018.