A Player’s life is more than excelling, it’s struggling, coming from all the odds they aim their journey until they achieve it. P.V. Sindhu is a professional Indian badminton player who represents India at international level badminton competitions. Coming from a sports background, with her parents, P.V. Ramana and P. Vijaya were Volleyball players. P.V. Sindhu’s father received the Arjuna Award for the best performance in his sport of volleyball. At six, P.V. Sindhu took up her sports as her career but she chose Badminton as her professional life as she developed her interest and got inspired by Pullela Gopichand who won the 2001 All England Open Badminton Championship.
The true journey of her professional life with success started at the age of 10. She used to travel more than 120 km to train for more than 12 years to build herself for challenging goals, her father would wake her up at 3 am for training at Pullela Gopichand’s academy, each day with the heavy struggle they traveled around 60 km twice a day. “The fact that she reports on time at the coaching camps daily, traveling a distance of 60 km from her residence, is perhaps a reflection of her willingness to complete her desire to be a good badminton player with the required hard work and commitment.” Gopichand seconded this correspondent’s opinion when he said that” the most striking feature in Sindhu’s game is her attitude and the never say die spirit.“She was an international and national winner in various tournaments she participated in, she is being called the golden girl of the country because of her determination and power to win without getting discouraged by the struggles and made to win such championships and gained much experience from it. Winning many tournaments such as 5th Servo all India Ranking championship in doubles and Single title at Ambuja Cement All India ranking and PV Sindhu also got IOC All India Ranking, won the singles title at the Sub-juniors in Pondicherry, the Sub-Junior Nationals, doubles titles at the Krishna Khaitan All India Tournament and getting the All India Ranking in Pune. She also won the under-14 team trophy at the 51st National School Games in India.
When she was ranked within the top 20 within the BWF World Ranking in September 2012, She was just 17 at that time. She received great honor’s as she became the first Indian woman in Singles to win a medal at the Badminton world championship in the year 2013. With her great success, the government of India awarded the Padma Shri to PV Sindhu, making her the youngest to receive the fourth-highest civilian honor in 2015. Later, she aimed to create history and worked hard to earn a medal at Rio Olympics 2016. As the year passed on she came under the 9th on the basis of world rankings. With the support of the family, coach, teammates, and her self-determination she cleared all the rounds of qualifications and reached the finals. Her first qualification match was a touch simple for her to win but the subsequent three matches were against the players who ranked world no.2 to qualify for the semifinals and she won the semifinal that made her dreams of finals against world champions. With this found herself a spot within the finals of the Rio Olympics Badminton trophy match. In the final match, she started off great and gave a troublesome competition to no.1 Carolina Marin, but towards the top, she has got to accept the silver. She became the first woman badminton player from India to win a silver.
PV Sindhu, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics badminton women’s singles bronze medalist, took her to her social media handles to share her thoughts after the historic win. Sindhu won her second Olympic medal beating China’s He Bing Jiao in the bronze medal, after bagging silver in Rio 2016. She scripted more history as she became the 1st Indian woman ever to win two individual Olympics medals. “She appreciates all the well wishes and words of support from bottom of her heart,” she said after her historic win. I carried it all the way through and it means the planet to me, even as this medal means everything on behalf of me to represent our nation.” She spoke.
The Indian government awarded P.V. Sindhu with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratan Award in the year 2016. She now has three of the very best civilian honor awards to her name. Sindhu made the Forbes list of Highest-Paid Female Athletes in 2018 and 2019. She is the recipient of the sports honor Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna. She has also been honored with Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award in India. She rose to instantaneous fame among her fans and made all of India realize that there’s more to Indian sports than cricket. She gave an excellent example of fighting against the odds and in spite of being a lady within the patriarchal country, support of the loved ones and determination to succeed can lead you to your destiny, she said.
P.V. Sindhu is the pride of the nation, who created history by winning the first-ever silver medal in Rio Olympics 2016 and bronze medal in 2020 Tokyo Olympics and she is the inspiration to the youth to look forward to badminton as a career objected sport.
Some of the famous quotes: “You dream. You plan. You reach. There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes but with hard work, focus with belief confidently and trust in yourself and with people around you, there are not any limits.” – Michael Phelps
“I’ve missed quite 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to require the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed again, again and again in my life and that is why I succeed.” This shows true struggle.—Michael Jordan.
“Your dreams are what define your individuality. They have the facility to offer you wings and cause you to fly high”
PV SINDHU.
The journey of a sports personality starts with a very small step with a lot of failures and a little success but what makes them win the whole world’s hearts is their determination, to never give up and hard work, for which we know them today. Today their existence created history after competing against all odds that came their way.
“Sometimes I think failure is equal to success, the more you go with failure the more you succeed, the more you experience.”
By Ankita Meher
