India's badminton star PV Sindhu has won a bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics 2020. She defeated China's He Bingjiao and became the first-ever Indian female athlete to win back-to-back Olympic medals. In the winning match, Sindhu was quite assertive in the game and she did not give her opponent any chance, winning it by 21- 13.
Sindhu landed in the competition for a bronze medal after she lost in straight sets to Tau Tzu-Ying of Chinese Taipei in the semifinals. Yet before the semifinals, she had performed incredibly, having not lost a single set until then. The defeat in the semifinals was a huge hit for her, yet she was poised. Extending from where she left off, PV Sindhu did not relax, and in the end, she covered up the match in straight games. She turned her focus on the next opponent from China and won India's second medal.
PV Sindhu played with complete concentration while Bingjiao found herself quite clueless and caught by a blow by some of the Sindhu's rebounds in the game. However, Sindhu dropped a possibility to win gold or silver as she lost her semifinal match against Chinese Taipei's Tai Tzu Ying. Sindhu had played certainly well in the singles event after beating Japan's Akane Yamaguchi in the quarterfinals, but the Chinese Taipei player defeated Sindhu by 21-18 and 21-12 in the semifinals.
PV Sindhu's recent victory means that she has now become the first-ever Indian woman to win two Olympic medals. In the year 2016, she has also seized a silver medal in the Rio Olympics. The Hyderabad girl has shown her bright spirit when she lost the finals at Rio Olympics against Carolina Marin of Spain, by 21-15 in the 3rd set. In that process, Sindhu became the first woman from India to hold an Olympic silver medal in 2016.
The fact that Carolina Marin, who defeated Sindhu in 2016 was out due to an injury in Tokyo Olympics 2020, made Sindhu a more leading contender. Though 2021 did not begin great for PV Sindhu, the Swiss Open and the All-England Badminton Championships were big for her. She has been working on improving her performance with her South Korean coach Park Tae Sang. She rose to a career-high world ranking of no 2 in April 2017. In August 2019, she won gold at the World Championship. And over the years, she also has won several other medals at various tournaments including the BWF Circuit. And one of her most significant achievements is that she is the first Indian to become the Badminton World Champion and also the first Indian woman to earn an Olympic silver medal.
Presently, PV Sindhu is the winner of a bronze medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. And her incredible journey from the lanes of Hyderabad to the Olympics medal podium is one of the good examples of training, and hard work. She has also been an inspiration for numerous sportswomen in the country. Earlier, India's Mirabai Chanu secured a silver medal, which became the country's first medal in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics. And now the remarkable bronze medal by PV Sindhu made the second honor for India in Olympics, with both being won by women of India.
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Reference -
- www.olympics.com
- www.wikipedia.org