“I am really happy”. “We would have loved to get the gold but for her first Olympics and the way she played, I feel very very proud”. She’s doing a great job. She took it in her stride and said it did not affect her game. By virtue of her super show at Rio, Sindhu will get 10,200 points. In the second game, despite the deficit, I still did not leave anything, because you never know when things might change.
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Sindhu first beat world No 8 Tzu Ying Tai in the prequarters, world No 2 Wang Yihan in the last eight and in the semis she breezed past world No 6 Nozomi Okuhara to assure India the first silver in badminton in the Olympics. Brick by brick she established herself as one of the best players on the circuit, and ultimately the very best.
Sindhu has been stressing on hard work and going by her coach Pullela Gopichand and her own words, that seems to be the case. Of course, you want to get the medal, but before that you want to play and I was just thinking one match at a time. The credit also goes to her coach Gopichand and academy, to nurture this Hyderabadi talent!
Discipline was the key to the accomplishment, and Sindhu said that she was looking forward to getting back to her phone, ice cream and chocolates, not necessarily in that order. Marin knelt down on the court and wept inconsolably before Sindhu went to the other end to lift her, and the two exchanged hugs. “I just wish that our flag had gone one bit higher and our National anthem was played”. “I would like to thank the support staff”.
The shuttler was unable to strike gold, but clinched the silver with her aggressive defense as she forced world No. 1, Carolina Marin of Spain, to three games in the women’s singles final on Friday. On that momentous Friday evening, even as a billion supporters cried out hoarsely for Sindhu to emerge triumphant, one athlete attained her badminton nirvana. She was strong, she kept attacking.
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While she tried to do the latter and even got Marin committing many errors at the net, it was in the former area that the Spaniard proved to be significantly tougher to counter, delivering several precise crosscourt drops which were too much for the Indian to retrieve. I hold no grudges against PV (Sindhu) for that.
