Nepal’s badminton player Prince Dahal has been drawn in Group P for the men’s singles competition at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

The draw for the group stage was held at the Badminton World Federation (BWF) headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Friday.

Dahal has been drawn alongside Viktor Axelsen of Denmark, Nhat Nguyen of Ireland and Misha Zilberman of Israel.

Danish badminton player Axelsen is the world number two in men’s singles and a two-time world champion.

Israeli Zilberman represented his country at the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics. He also won a bronze medal at the European Badminton Championships in 2022.

Nguyen was the gold medalist at the 2016 European U17 Championships.

Dahal won the 2018 Dubai International Junior series. In 2022, he rose to the top of the BWF’s list of men’s juniors. He is also a silver medallist at the 2019 South Asia U-21 Championships.

A total of 41 players (from 36 countries)—split into 13 groups of three or four—are competing in the men’s singles badminton at Paris 2024. The group winners will advance to the knockout stage. Each game of the round-robin tournament will be played in a best-of-three format.

The badminton competition will be held from July 27 to August 5 at the Porte de la Chapelle Arena in Paris.

This is the first time Nepal is participating in the badminton competition at the Olympics.

A total of seven players, including Dahal, are participating at Paris 2024. Santoshi Shrestha of athletics, swimmers Alexander Shah and Duana Lama, table tennis player Santoo Shrestha, judo player Manita Shrestha Pradhan and shooting’s Sushmita Nepal are other participants.

Santoo is the third Nepali player to qualify for the Olympics–after Sangina Baidya at Athens 2004 and Deepak Bista in Beijing 2008–through selection tournaments.

He secured his spot at the Olympics after winning the gold at the 2024 South Asian Qualification Tournament in Kathmandu.

Santoo will also be the first Nepali table tennis player to participate at the Olympics.