Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty on 2025 campaign: 'We want to be back on top of the world'

After the Paris Olympics 2024 heartbreak and missing multiple tournaments due to injury issues, India’s No. 1 men’s doubles pair Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty will be back in action on Wednesday with a match against Ming Che Lu and Tang Kai Wei of Chinese Taipei at the Malaysia Open, kicking off their 2025 campaign.

Famously known as ‘Sat-Chi,’ the former world No. 1 duo was seen as India’s strongest medal contender in badminton at the Paris Olympics but suffered a heartbreaking exit in the quarter-finals as they went down to Aaron Chia and Wooi Yik Soh of Malaysia despite winning the first game. Post-Paris Games, Satwik’s shoulder injury forced them to miss top tournaments like the Arctic Open and Denmark Open. At the same time, they pulled out of the Syed Modi India International Badminton Championship at home due to Chirag’s knee issues after reaching the semi-finals of China Masters.

‘Sat-Chi’ aims to get back to world No.1

With the troubled second half in 2024 behind them, the star men’s doubles pair is “100 per cent fit” and raring to go in 2025 as they plan to participate in India Open and Indonesia Masters in January after playing in Malaysia.

“It’s (the start of 2025) going to be about participating in as many tournaments as possible,” Satwiksairaj said on the sidelines of the launch event for the high-performance badminton centre Bhubaneswar on 13 December. “But definitely it’s not going to be fine just to participate because we want the podium finishes. We want to be back on the top of the world again.”

It will also be a fresh start for their coach in many ways. Satwik and Chirag are back with their former coach Kim Tan Her following the retirement of Mathias Boe after Paris 2024 . In his first tenure in India, Kim Tan Her was responsible for bringing Satwik and Chirag together as a men’s doubles pair and the duo is excited to work again with the former Thomas Cup silver medallist, but the equation would be a bit different this time.

“Mathias was a little serious and he’s (Kim Tan Her) also serious, but he’s like a little okayish with the fun things. Last time, we just used to follow his (Kim Tan Her) programme, whatever he used to say. Now we have discussed that it’s going to be vice versa. Like, we’ll be telling what was helping us in the previous time. And he was telling this what could have been done better. ‘This is your weakness. You have to strengthen this part’. So we are working on it,” 24-year-old Satwik said.

Chirag, 27, added: “Really happy to be training again with Tan. He has been instrumental in making us a pair and I’m really happy to be training with him once again.”

Learnings from Paris 2024 heartbreak

Reflecting on their shock exit from the Paris Olympics and what they learned from their second Summer Games appearance, Satwik said: “Definitely it was a good experience. Again, playing in big events is always fun. There’s so much pressure also. It will help us in future tournaments as well. Like, how to handle pressure situations.

“I felt it was a learning only. There’s no full stop, it’s a comma. We get back again and give our best. It gave us a lot more fire. It wasn’t enough. 2023 wasn’t enough. What we achieved. So that fire has doubled up now. Hopefully, we’ll do better in the next one (year).”