Saina Nehwal won the Swiss Open, plus Thailand and Indonesia titles right before she medalled at the London Olympics. PV Sindhu meanwhile had 2 first round exits, 3 second round ousters and 5 quarterfinals besides a title at mid-rung Malaysia Masters start of 2016 before she went on the podium at Rio for a glorious silver.
Sindhu made the finals of Swiss Open and semis at All England in the season leading up to Tokyo bronze. She wasn’t exactly a Top 5 seed at Rio when the silver came, nor was she sweeping titles in the run-up to Tokyo, but ended up India’s most successful Olympian in badminton.
The run-up season to an Olympic medal take-off needn’t be an all-conquering one. Carolina Marin had a pair of quarters and semis in 2016, though the preceding year of 2015 saw her pick 6 titles including the All England and the World Championship, her second of three.
Tokyo men’s doubles gold medallists Wang Chi-Lin and Lee Yang, though, remained unbeaten over three tournament titles in the January of 2021, before turning up in Japan to clinch the Games gold, stunning the Chinese favourites. In fact, Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were the only ones to hand them a defeat that year till the August of 2021.
Viktor Axelsen made 6 finals in the lead up to his Tokyo Games gold in each of the events he participated in in 2021 heading into the Olympics, winning 4 titles. There were entertaining losses to Lee Zii Jia at All England – including a 30-29 will-not-blink first set – and to Anders Antonsen at World Tour Finals at the start of that year. His appetite was suitably unsatiated, heading into the Games, though an Olympic gold hardly needs added motivation.
Lee Chong Wei made 5/5 (tourneys played) finals in 2012 before London, while Lin Dan didn’t mind a couple of middling semifinals heading into those Olympics. Sindhu was one of the few absolutely unheralded medallists at Rio, though she had given hints of her greatness with her two World Championships bronzes and casual swattings of the fading Chinese.
Still, peaking towards an Olympics needs a balanced dose of confidence and staying on your toes, keeping the hunger alive. Perhaps the biggest concern in the Olympic year is to stay fit, and mentally fresh, for landing up injured or jaded can see your challenge coming undone.
But there’s a bunch of boxes India’s top names headed to the 2024 Games need to tick before Paris fetches up.
For Satwik-Chirag, who had an astounding 2023, just keeping away from injuries is an absolute essential. They have the game and the necessary arsenal to challenge for the medal in a stacked field in men’s doubles. They consistently beat Top Tenners, have no bogey rivals and boast of a stunning record in finals pointing to a grand temperament. But coach Mathias Boe will need to prepare them to not allow the occasion of imminent success to get to them. That pressure can unravel quite a few hopes.
The Tokyo exit in pool stage was hurtful enough for them to not get complacent. But more recently, the World Championships googly of Danish Astrup-Rasmussen handing them a defeat in quarters to deny them a medal, was an instance of how surprises can erupt unpleasantly, when least expected. The Danes went on to make finals and have remained competitive without being seen as a top threat like the Koreans, Chinese or Malaysians and Indonesians. But the Olympics is just the sort of event where dark horses spring a few shocks, and the Worlds loss was a good wakeup call to deal with the left-right threat that can be expertly deployed against the good Indians.
The eventual world champ Koreans Seo-Kang and the Chinese grinning assassins Liang-Wang are obvious contenders, but never rule out the Indonesians. Satwik-Chirag will do well to hold a few tricks back, sheath a few blades, in coming months. They aren’t exactly expected to win every title or reassure their fandom of their credentials though the All England can be a massive confidence rocket launcher ahead of Paris.
Prannoy will start as a dark horse, but with a definite mental edge against Axelsen. His own smarts and the ticking brain of Gopichand and Guru Saidutt mean he will have a bag of tricks neatly folded in his pocket before he unfurls them at the Paris biggie. Though pressure will mount on him to constantly prove his form, it’s only his fitness that he needs to safeguard without getting baited into trying anything rash.
In men’s singles, a couple of new names, Lin Chin-Yi and Chia Hao Lee, cannot be underestimated just as Naraoka, Kunlavut, Weng Hong Yang, Antonsen and Li Shifeng need to be taken seriously. Axelsen remains formidable and Shi Yuqi is hungry to reclaim the crown for China. Prannoy will need to keep backing his ability to stun anyone and attain peak fitness, never mind what the results in the leadup.
Sindhu has an entire comeback to execute. These are exciting times with Prakash Padukone having taken up the challenge to prep her for Paris. But like Prannoy, she’ll need to keep one firm eye on her fitness, before she can bolt out of the blocks. She’s literally a rocket in these matters, and doesn’t need an elaborate runway to gain acceleration ahead of big events, her many medals have shown. But there’s psychological quizzes she’ll need to answer – proving to herself that she can indeed beat An Se Young or Tai Tzu Ying and Marin.
Not so much the titles, but the matchups need resolving.
What might help the top names this year is the Asian Mixed Team event and later the Thomas Uber Cups. While the men defend their crown, which won’t be too easy, the biggest takeaway from the 2022 title run was how they can work together as a team and help each other out. Just knowing that it’s not a lonely uphill struggle and there’s a team rooting for your wins, can have positive vibes enough to keep the bunch upbeat before attention turns to the Olympics.
For Lakshya Sen and Kidambi Srikanth, the equation in the leadup is straightforward: win all they can, shrug off the defeats, do the basics of winning one day at a time. 2023 has been wretched, and expectations are tempered, so they can focus on sneaking into the qualification bracket.
Srikanth especially really thrives on confidence, and should ideally look to collect as many Top 10 scalps as possible, and re-acquaint himself with deep runs into tournaments. Demanding titles from him seems preposterous, though he will need some solid blocks of busy playing weekends to crack the Top 16.
Sen is lagging behind the likes of Kunlavut, Naraoka, Weng Hong Yang and Li Shifeng. And the pressure is likely to cascade on him having raised expectations for so many years. He really could do with a title or two, and though he fears no opponent and can casually turn up to win at the big stage, his string of losses in attempting a simple task of early round wins, will need to be snapped out of. Sen can look just as terrible as he can seem terrific when he wins. But he will need mundane, unglamorous, plodding, scrappy wins before he looks ready for the Olympics.
Women’s doubles pairings of Treesa-Gayatri and Ashwini-Tanisha have a nice duel going on, and that can only push each other to get better results, never mind which of them qualifies. The two pairings though need some chunky seeded scalps in coming months.
The early exits in singles at Malaysia will give Indians time enough to prepare for India Open, where local challenge didn’t enter the weekend stage last year. It’s a good opportunity to soak up the partisan energy and remind themselves of just how deeply their Olympic runs mean to the nation. But Delhi is only a pitstop to imbibe lessons, Paris is the final destination this year.
2024-01-14 03:32:17
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