PV Sindhu has never returned from an Olympics without a medal.
PV Sindhu has never lost to a player from China, one of badminton’s heavyweights, at the World Championships or the Olympics.
Both of these are extraordinary facts that, with her other achievements, elevate Sindhu to the Indian sporting pantheon. Both of these streaks ended at Paris Olympics on Thursday, when Sindhu lost to China’s He Bing Jiao in straight games in the pre-quarterfinal.
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Poignantly, this loss came exactly three years after she had beaten the same player in the bronze medal match at Tokyo to win her second Olympics medal – the first Indian female athlete to do so.
A sad day for Indian sport but, as Sindhu said emotionally after the match, she should keep her head held high. She played her best, doing everything she could to shake off the effects of two injury layoffs and put herself in medal contention as the 10th seed. She may not have been a medal favourite but, given her calibre and track record, Sindhu is the kind of player no one would ever count out.
If this was the last time we saw Sindhu at the Olympics, it will be a bittersweet ending. There will obviously be pride at everything she’s done but also the realisation this is the end of something unique: an Indian athlete staying consistent and commanding across two Olympics and performing well enough to be a top-10 seed at the third.
Few other Indian athletes have that kind of longevity at the Games. And Sindhu did it in a sport as physically draining and logistically demanding as badminton, where players have to compete across the globe in 14-16 BWF events as individuals and a few more for their country.
She’s done it for more than a decade now, starting as a teenager who stunned the world, and the Chinese, to win her first World Championship medal in 2013. She’s won four more since, becoming the world champion in 2019. The most successful Indian player of the past decade, with or without a medal in Paris. That’s something no one can take away from her.
Her consistency at the biggest of stages captured the imagination of an Indian audience beyond sports fans and made her a household name.
Now, though, there’s a new reality for Sindhu, and for Indian sport too: she is no longer a reigning Olympic medallist. And that raises uncomfortable questions: Will she have the same level of motivation after a deflating loss to a player she has beaten before? Or will she slowly fade away, like her predecessor Saina Nehwal did, neither retired nor an active player after injury woes and age caught up? Does she have another Olympics in her?
She is 29 now and will be 33 by the time of LA 2028, an age where most top badminton players have passed their peak. Especially the ones with her kind of physical playing style.
However, with her fitness levels and skill, it will be difficult but not entirely impossible for Sindhu to prolong four more years if she truly wants to. Or at least the two more years for the Asian and Commonwealth Games, the big multi-sport events where Sindhu has always excelled. The lack of successors to her in Indian women’s singles could also be a factor: there is no other young Indian player who can push her out of the Indian team – or, indeed, push her to newer heights, as has happened with HS Prannoy – as of now.
There are no easy answers but one thing is for certain, Sindhu will not go just yet. For all her success, she has goals still to achieve. Big titles on the BWF Tour, more shots at the World Championship. She is not one to brood over losses. The long streak of silver and bronze medals bear witness that she always come back to fight irrespective of the previous result.
She’s in good shape to continue too. Despite her physical struggles in the last couple of years after the stress fracture she sustained en route the 2022 Commonwealth Games gold, she has managed to stay in the top 10-15 of the world rankings. Despite no titles in the last two years and lopsided final losses, she has pushed the top players like Carolina Marin and Chen Yu Fei in 2024.
Where will we see Sindhu next? Perhaps not at the Japan Open, which is the next scheduled competition on the jam-packed BWF World Tour. It’s a Super 750, which makes it a mandatory event for top plyers unless injured. Perhaps she takes a break after planning her season around peaking at the Olympics. All will depend on her mental state once she processes her exit.
The match itself was a metaphor for her form in the last two years. Coming very close in the first game but losing it from the clutch position of 19-19. Getting completely outplayed in the second game, the fight dimming after not being able to match up to her opponent’s pace.
This was not a version of Sindhu India has seen at the big stage. She has always been the fighter who stays in points, rallies, games till she can. The marathon epic 2017 World Championships final against Nozomi Okuhara. The Rio Olympic final against Carolina Marin. Both losses but those where she left her all out on the court.
Thursday’s match, though, was a marker of the sands of time. The sad reality is that Sindhu’s levels have dipped. Her peak is not world beating as it once was. She did everything she could to get ready for this moment. She changed her team and coaches, moved her base from Hyderabad to Bangalore, made new mentor Prakash Padukone travel to tournaments for the first time and added facets to her game at the age of 29. It wasn’t enough in the end.
She was more philosophical as she said, “It’s sad. The result, I couldn’t get what I expected, but it’s a journey, isn’t it? It’s been a wonderful journey so far. There were ups and downs, and I came back from an injury, and everything was going on well. You can’t expect easy wins or picking the form at the right time. Sometimes it might not be your day.”
For almost a decade Sindhu was Indian badminton. She took over the mantle – and the weight of expectation that comes with it – from Nehwal and now sees younger male players, Sat-Chi and Lakshya Sen, jostling for that space. They may yet earn that space – Lakshya, especially, has time on his side – but Sindhu, as she’s done all her career, will make them fight for it. She’s down, but she’s not out.
