The Correspondent: Saina Nehwal is at the moment involved with sustaining health for competitions and tournaments subsequent 12 months and never thinking about the lengthy highway forward of her to make sure a fourth look on the Olympic Games.
The 2012 London Olympics bronze medallist is at the moment ranked 22nd within the Badminton World Federation’s (BWF) Race to Tokyo rankings and must be throughout the high 13 to seal qualification.
The 30-year-old former girls’s singles world No.1 is at the moment seeking to get again to aggressive badminton in January. “I have no plans as such,” Saina informed in an unique interview, when requested about her plans to method the qualification interval subsequent 12 months.
“I am only trying to improve the fitness and [look after] my injuries during this period and would look forward to do well in competitions. I am not thinking much about qualifying for Olympics,” she mentioned.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic introduced the badminton calendar to a halt, and finally compelled the postponement of the Olympics itself, Saina was in a race towards time to substantiate qualification to the quadrennial occasion. The freezing of the calendar, and finally the BWF rankings, meant that Saina might cease and recuperate.
“I took a break probably for few weeks. I had some issues with my ankle and shins and I needed a proper break so it was good. Once I started back, obviously, I knew that it will take a few months to get back in shape as I need to progress slowly for my fitness. But it was fun. We also knew we had enough time before tournaments would happen,” she mentioned.
Saina was earlier anticipated to stage a comeback on the Denmark Open that’s scheduled to begin on October 13, earlier than she turned one in all a number of excessive profile gamers to tug out of the Super 750 occasion. She was additionally within the Indian workforce for the Uber Cup that was to be held on the identical venue from October three earlier than the event was indefinitely postponed.
“In my case, I just didn’t feel I need to go all the way for one tournament; also ranking points won’t count towards Olympic qualification as of now, so I had a few reasons. Also, BWF left the decision to individual athletes to take a call, so they did the best they could,” she mentioned.
Saina and her husband and fellow badminton star Parupalli Kashyap are marketing campaign ambassadors of Discovery Plus ‘The Big Learning Festival’.
“Kashyap and I have always believed that it is important to develop learning as a habit which makes it an automated process and we start grasping things from even the smallest incident. The fact that we both are known faces to the Indian audiences is only going to increase the relatability,” she mentioned.
