World badminton champion PV Sindhu recently gave her fans a mini heart attack with ‘I RETIRE’ post on social media handle. However, we later got to know that she ‘retire’ not from her badminton career but from the on-going negativity created by the pandemic. Having etched her name as well as India’s on the world map of badminton with back to back victories, it would be a dismay if the 25-year-old actually retired.
At such a young age, Sindhu has achieved so much in her athletic career – from winning the all-India junior major ranking badminton tournament to becoming the first Indian to win a Badminton World Championships gold.
Childhood and Education background
Born on July 5, 1995 in Hyderabad, PV Sindhu hails from a family of athletes. Her parents – P. Vijaya and P. V. Ramana were national level volleyball players. She did her schooling from Auxilium High School and went on to attend St. Ann’s College for Women later on.
Sindhu’s tryst with badminton started at a mere age of 8 and under the mentorship of Mehboob Ali, she started learning the basics of the sport at the badminton courts of Indian Railway Institute of Signal Engineering and Telecommunications in Secunderabad.
She joined Gopichand Badminton Academy and since then, she has won several noteworthy titles in under 10-years category, under 13-years category and under 14-years category. However, she got her first exposure to international badminton circuit at 14 years of age when she took part in the 2009 Sub-Junior Asian Badminton Championships in Colombo, for which she earned a bronze medal.
Even though PV Sindhu has shown a streak of athletic prowess at a very young age, her inspiration behind choosing badminton as a career was drawn from Pullela Gopichand, 2001 All England Open Badminton Champion.
Achievements in PV Sindhu’s badminton career
- In 2013, the same year she won a bronze medal at the World Championships in 2013, Sindhu was awarded the Arjuna Award, one of the greatest sports honours for a sportsperson.
- She became the first Indian to win two back-to-back medals in the BWF World Badminton Championships.
- Sindhu made a ground-breaking achievement in her badminton career in the year 2016 when she became the youngest and the first female Indian athlete to win a silver medal at Rio Olympics.
- She was also honoured with the Padma Shri Award.
- With earnings of around $8.5 million, Sindhu was ranked seventh in Forbes’ list of Highest-paid female athletes 2018.
- The list of her achievements is endless, to which she has time and again credited her parents.
- Bearing the World Champion tag, the ace shuttler has already secured a position in the Tokyo Olympics which is to be held in 2021.
