Kunlavut Vitidsarn achieves rare feat with gold at Asian Games 2026
Vitidsarn defeated Loh Kean Yew in the final.
Kunlavut Vitidsarn has finally won the one title that kept slipping away from him. On Tuesday, the 25-year-old Thai beat Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew 21-12, 21-16 in the men’s singles final at the Ichinomiya City Municipal Gymnasium in Japan.
He is the first Thai to win this event at the Asian Games, and the result ends a 64-year wait for Thailand’s first individual badminton gold at the Games (badminton was started as a competitive sport in 1962). The previous best in this event was a bronze by Sangob Rattanusorn in 1970.
The timing was neat. The same day, Kunlavut returned to World No. 1, the spot he first reached in June 2025.
He also became the fourth men’s singles player to win the World Championships, the Asian Championships and the Asian Games, after China’s Zhao Jianhua, Indonesia’s Taufik Hidayat and China’s Lin Dan.
He won the World title in 2023 and the Asian title in 2025, and he took Olympic silver in Paris in 2024. Heading into the final, he held an 8-2 head-to-head record against Loh and had also defeated him in the 2021 SEA Games final.
How did Kunlavut Vitidsarn win the final at Asian Games 2026?
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The first game was level at 8-8. Kunlavut then pulled away to 12-8, stretched the gap to 19-12 and closed it out at 21-12. The second game was tighter, with the two level at 13-13.
Kunlavut moved to 18-15 and held on for 21-16. Fans call him the “Three-Game God” because his defensive style often wears opponents down over a long third game, but this final needed only two.
His route to the final was also a first. On September 28, he became the first Thai to reach an Asian Games men’s singles final, beating Indonesia’s Alwi Farhan 21-13, 21-15 in the semi-finals.
The result is a sharp turnaround from Hangzhou 2022, where he left without a medal. It also follows a mixed year. He won the Malaysia Open in January, the first Thai to do so in 68 years.
Loh still made history as the first Singaporean shuttler to reach an Asian Games final.
Who won the men’s singles badminton gold at the Asian Games 2026?
Thailand’s Kunlavut Vitidsarn. He beat Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew 21-12, 21-16 in the final on September 29.
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