Yonex All England Badminton Championships 2021, March 17-21

[sameerph]

Looks like Sindhu did not have nuch left in her tank after yesterday's marathon. Lost tamely against Thai youngster.

[SF] (5) PUSARLA V. Sindhu (IND,7) l. (6) Pornpawee CHOCHUWONG (THA,11) 17-21 9-21

[jayakris]

^^^ So I am back to thinking that Sindhu no longer has the drive she had before. Hope I am wrong.

[PKBasu]

Nothing like that. She played a very tough QF, probably got totally exhausted, and that interfered with her SF performance. What we know about her is that she has the ability to peak at the right time for the Olympics and World Championships. I would still put her down as a solid gold medal prospect at the Tokyo Olympics. The All-England is no longer quite as important a championship as it once was, sadly (given that Prakash winning it was a truly big deal, and Gopichand doing so was still a big deal, albeit marginally less so by that time).

[prasen9]

I would still put her down as a solid gold medal prospect at the Tokyo Olympics.

On the basis of what? If anything she has showed the inability to win in the finals again and again in the big events in her career.

[Sin Hombre]

The basis is classic PKB optimism.

She is a marginal medal prospect at this point.

[sameerph]

I would still put her down as a solid gold medal prospect at the Tokyo Olympics.

On the basis of what? If anything she has showed the inability to win in the finals again and again in the big events in her career.

This time I will be happy even if she makes the final and loses there. As of now, I would give her only about 10-15% chance for a bronze.

Sadly in last 2-3 years, most of our badminton players have generally regressed. Srikanth, Sai Praneeth, Prannoy, Sameer Verma have all have down in the last 2-3 year, Saina is almost done.

Only 2 new players who seem to have potential who have emerged are Lakshya Sen in mens singles and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy in doubles. But, as of now they are still away from being olympic medal level. Lets hope they can break out by next olympics.

And we desparely need new talent to emerge.

[suresh]

And we desparely need new talent to emerge.

We also need to see other coaching centres produce players regularly. Nikhil Kanetkar set up an academy in Pune. Of course, there is the Padukone academy in Bangalore that has coached Lakshya Sen.

[prasen9]

And Gopi to forget about all the politics and focus on producing more from his center and not rest on past laurels.

[Sin Hombre]

None of that is likely to happen.

Indian badminton has been on a bad spiral downwards for a while now.

[PKBasu]

I would still put her down as a solid gold medal prospect at the Tokyo Olympics.

On the basis of what? If anything she has showed the inability to win in the finals again and again in the big events in her career.

She is the reigning world champion!!

OK, before that world championship, she did have a number of silvers, including at the Olympics and in the world championship. But my point is that she has always known how to peak for those key championships.

[prasen9]

Of the last 7 Olympic Gold Medalists, only two Ning Zhang and Carolina Martin were reigning World Champions. So the probability of being an Olympic Gold Medalist if you are a World Champion (reigning) is low.

[gbelday]

And Gopi to forget about all the politics and focus on producing more from his center and not rest on past laurels.

What makes you think that Gopi is not focused? Just curious. Our players are the one who seem to have lost their focus honestly. I am purely basing it on some of the Instagram posts (Kashyap, Saina, Sai, Guru etc).

[arjun2761]

Of the last 7 Olympic Gold Medalists, only two Ning Zhang and Carolina Martin were reigning World Champions. So the probability of being an Olympic Gold Medalist if you are a World Champion (reigning) is low.

Sorry this seems like a fairly random correlation rather than a causation. I would think that prospectively the chances of a world champion winning an olympic medal is most sports is quite high...