BOTHWELL'S Kirsty Gilmour is on course for a semi-final clash with four-times champion Rita Yuan Gao when the Yonex Scottish National Championships take place at Bell's Sports Centre in Perth this weekend.

Top seed Gilmour, a semi-finalist last year, starts with a bye and then faces Fiona Archibald or Emma Cook before a likely contest with Yuan Gao, who is returning from her coaching job in Switzerland to compete in the Nationals. Yuan Gao is the only previous winner of the title in the line-up.

The 18-year-old is seeded to meet three-times runner-up Linda Sloan in Sunday afternoon's final and the 22-year-old from Glasgow begins her bid with a second-round match against Rebekka Findlay or Laura Muir.

The latest Scottish senior rankings are now available to view in the ranking section of our website. Click here to view them 

With little more than three months to go before the London 2012 qualification period concludes, GB Badminton continues to demonstrate its focus on medal potential athletes to represent Great Britain at London 2012.

The regular reviews of each athlete has already seen men’s singles hope Carl Baxter and men’s doubles pair Chris Langridge and Anthony Clark drop out of the race to London.

And today Scotland’s Robert Blair and England’s Gabby White, one of the three pairs in the mixed doubles race, became the latest Olympic players to be removed from Badminton’s ‘Olympic Track’ when they fell out of contention by slipping below their two GB rivals to No. 26 in the world rankings. As a consequence Blair is to lose his place on the GB World Class Performance Programme, while White will focus on her Women’s Doubles partnership with Jenny Wallwork as well as look ahead to Rio in 2016.

BADMINTONscotland are offering badminton followers the chance to get involved in helping to run a major tournament by volunteering for the Scottish 4 Nationals Parabadminton Championships at Glasgow's Scotstoun International Sports Arena from February 17-19.

Players from all over the United Kingdom will be competing including some of the best disabled players in the world, such as world championship gold medallist Steven Moodie and silver medallist Alan Oliver.