How PV Sindhu definitively shed off the tag of second best!
The badminton star became the first Indian to win World Championships gold in 2019
As historic as PV Sindhu’s silver medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics was, the achievement started a vicious cycle that the shuttler took another three years to break. Despite all the upgrades in her skill, and the accolades that followed across tournaments, she somehow struggled to get past the final hurdle and was forced to settle for second place.
It led to the golden girl of Indian badminton garnering the unflattering moniker, ‘Silver Sindhu.’ She has come a long way since, and will be India's brightest medal hope at Tokyo 2020, which began on July 23.
In fact, a few months before the Rio medal, at the South Asian Games (SAF Games) in Guwahati and Shillong that year, Sindhu lost the final match to lesser known compatriot Ruthvika Shivani Gadde.
In Rio came the close fight against Spain’s Carolina Marin.
A year later she reached the final of the World Championships for the first time. She had already won two bronze medals from past editions of the tournament. And buoyed by the success of her Olympic sojourn, there was an expectation for her to become the first Indian ever to win the world title. But in the final, what became one of the sport’s most memorable matches – a bout that lasted an hour and 50 minutes – she lost to Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara 21-19, 20-22, 22-20.
The following year she again reached the World Championship final, this time again losing to Marin. This result was sandwiched between two other singles silver medals at the 2018 Commonwealth Games (losing to Saina Nehwal) and the Asian Games (lost to Chinese Taipei’s crafty shuttler Tai Tzu-Ying).
The achievements were commendable, but the pressure to overcome the final hurdle had started to build-up.
“After the 2016 Olympics, I had six to seven silver medals. People started telling me that ‘you have a final phobia’,” she had said on a talk show.
Sindhu bust the myth when she won the season-ending BWF Tour Finals in 2018. She defeated Okuhara 21-19, 21-17 in the final in Guangzhou to win the prestigious title.
At the 2019 World Championships in Basel, again Sindhu found herself in the final. And again she was to square off against tenacious Okuhara.
“I wanted to win that final at any cost. I did not know how I would do it, but I knew that I had to achieve it,” she’d say after the final.
Armed with a steely determination to not settle for silver this time, Sindhu entered the match keen on finishing points and not letting the serial retriever Okuhara any room to edge her way into the match. It also perhaps worked in Sindhu’s favour that her Japanese opponent had to overcome a spirited Ratchanok Intanon in a tiring semi-final.
Two years earlier, Sindhu had lost the match in a long, but gripping, affair. This time she finished it off in 38 minutes, registering a 21-7, 21-7 win.
“At the (2019) World Championships, I was in the final again. I already had (won) two bronze and two silver...and I was like I have to win this match. So, I just wanted to give my 100 percent. I didn’t want people to say ‘Silver Sindhu’. At some point of time that gets into your mind and I told myself before the final ‘No, come on. I need to just give my 100 per cent no matter what and win this.’”
That elusive gold medal helped Sindhu become a joint record holder for most World Championship medals won in women’s singles, tied at five with two-time Olympic champion Zhang Ning of China. Incidentally, Sindhu’s tally of two bronze, two silver and a solitary gold is the same as Zhang’s.
When will PV Sindhu be seen at Tokyo 2020?
PV Sindhu will take on Israel's Ksenia Polikarpova in a Group J match on Sunday, July 25.