With this defeat, Sindhu failed to emulate ace Indian shooter Abhinav Bindra who won the country’s only Olympic individual gold medal in shooting at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. President Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal were among the first to post their messages on her big win. This time though, the World No. 1 showed no signs of nerves and took the second game 21-12 to force the match into the decider. Sindhu’s medal has made it an all-woman Games for India so far, coming a day after wrestler Sakshi Malik bagged bronze. At 21, she also became the youngest Indian to win an Olympic medal. Sindhu brought a silver medal in the singles badminton final match at the Rio Olympics to India. I didn t get really annoyed. She lost 21-19, 12-21, 15-21 to world No.1 Carolina Marin of Spain. When I called her on Gopi’s phone, she just replied in monosyllables.
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Left-hander Marin was pegged back to 10-10 soon after opening a five-point lead, but kept her composure as the tension mounted and dropped to the court in tears after Sindhu could not return a rasping overhead. I have become a great fan of yours.
Talking about the final, Sindhu said: “In today’s match we both were attacking and playing aggressive badminton”.
After winning India’s 2nd ever badminton medal Sindhu told Sportskeeda, “For the last three months, I had no access to the phone or internet, finally I have got it back from the coach”.
Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara won the bronze in a walkover after her Chinese opponent, the 2012 singles champion Li Xuerui, pulled out of their play-off with a serious knee injury. Coach Gopichand commented that “the most striking feature in Sindhu’s game is her attitude and the never-say-die spirit”.
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PV Ramana and P Vijaya, parents of shuttler PV Sindhu, have now pinned their hopes of the elusive gold medal in the 2020 Olympics to be hosted by Tokyo.
