Exclusive: PV Sindhu reflects on her journey, revisits highs and lows of glittering career on First Sports

In an exclusive conversation on First Sports, ace badminton player PV Sindhu opened up on her recent struggles besides reflecting on her journey so far and discussing her plans going forward. Sindhu has been going through a lean patch ever since she won gold in last year’s Commonwealth Games in Birmingham last August. She also suffered a knee injury in a recent event that has put her out of action for some time. The two-time Olympic and five-time World Championships medallist however, sounded confident in her ability to bounce back from her dip in form. “Of course I am confident and I believe in myself that I can come back, I can do it,” said Sindhu in a teaser of the episode, which will air on Monday, 4 December.

Sindhu injured her knee during the French Open Super 750 event in Rennes, France in October. The star shuttler was forced to concede her second-round match against Thailand’s Supanida Katethong despite having won the opening game. She has since been advised a few weeks’ rest after scans revealed a niggle on her left knee. The BWF has also decided to freeze her world ranking, which stands at 12, following her knee injury. Sindhu had won bronze in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to become the first Indian woman to win multiple individual Olympics medals, having won silver in the 2016 Rio Olympics. She had also become the first Indian to win gold at the BWF World Championships following her victory over Nozomi Okuhara in the 2019 edition in Basel. Sindhu, however, is yet to win a tournament since her gold at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. She would fail to reach the quarter-finals in the BWF World Championships that took place in the same month as CWG 2022, and ended the year 2023 without winning any of the 21 events that she was part of. The furthest the 28-year-old has gone this year is a runner-up finish in the Madrid Spain Masters along with semi-final appearances in the Malaysia Masters, Canada Open, Arctic Open and Denmark Open Super 500 events.