Huddersfield Olympian Marcus Ellis remains confident of progressing in Rio despite losing a first group match in the badminton.

The 26-year-old from Bolster Moor is in the men’s doubles with Chris Langridge and they lost their opening encounter to the strong Danish pairing of Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen, who reached the final at London 2012.

The British duo went down 9-21, 21-9, 16-21 but are hoping to bounce back against their next opponents, the South Korea pair Kim Gi Jung and Kim Sa Rang.

Ellis said: “We’re happy we managed to get our first game out of the way.

“It’s both of our first Olympic Games so I’m really happy to have put in a good performance.

“From that perspective, I’m happy and really proud of how we played. But I just know how close we were to beating a world-class pair and putting us in a good position to make the quarter-finals.

“We’re still looking forward though. We’ve got two more games and we’ve probably got the best pair out of the way.

“They’re certainly the hardest pair for us to play.

“So we’ve got two pairs coming up and we haven’t lost to either of them before. So we’ve got to use that as confidence that we can still make it through.”

Partner Langridge was frustrated not to have started with a win.

“We’re gutted,” said the 31-year-old from Epsom. “It was so close at the end as well.

“It was just one or two net cords, and we played one or two wrong shots and then it just slipped away from us.

“It’s tough because when we play well, we are really good. There are just a few patches where we play maybe the wrong shot or make a simple mistake and it’s so frustrating.

“It was such a good opportunity to take down one of the best pairs in the world. They’re current Olympic silver medalists.

“Now we’ve got two other games and we’ve got to make sure we put in as good a performance, if not slightly better. It’s going to be tough but we have played well and we’ve got to carry that on.”