The first Indian badminton player to win an Olympic medal is Saina Nehwal! The Indian shuttler created history when she won the bronze medal at the London 2012 Olympics. Everyone took notice of the Haryana shuttler when she won the BWF World Junior Championship in 2008 early in her career. She competed in her first Olympics in Beijing the same year, but she gained her global recognition at London 2012.
Saina Nehwal was born on March 17, 1990, and began playing badminton at the age of eight after her family relocated to Hyderabad from Haryana. She was introduced to the game mostly because of her mother who is a state-level badminton player herself. She was encouraged to play the game so she could familiarise with the local language and take after her mother’s dreams. The Indian shuttler successfully accomplished the feat by representing India at the highest level in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
A teenage Saina Nehwal upset Hong Kong’s Wang Chen, the world number five at the time, making her way to being the first Indian woman to make it to the quarterfinals of the Olympics. However, she lost to Indonesia’s Maria Kristin Yulianti in the Beijing 2008 quarterfinals. 20-year old Saina Nehwal received the Arjuna award in 2009 and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award in 2010 as a result of the tremendous support she received at home for her potential. Now that she was starting to make her mark on the Badminton World Federation (BWF) Tour, Nehwal’s confidence was booming. Following her Beijing 2008 experience, she started to receive titles. She won her maiden BWF Super Series tournament in 2009 at the Indonesian Open, making history as the first Indian woman to do so.
She soon saw more success, winning the 2010 Indonesian Open, Singapore Open, and India Open. In that same year, Nehwal won a very remarkable gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi after rallying from a match point deficit against Malaysia’s Wong Mew Choo. At the London 2012 Olympics, 22-year-old Saina Nehwal wrote a new chapter in Indian badminton under the guidance of renowned coach Pullela Gopichand. Nehwal, who was seeded fourth for the Games, advanced to the semi-finals by defeating Jie Yao of the Netherlands and Tine Baun of Denmark. Wang Yihan of China, her top-seeded opponent in last four, completed a straight games win. This arranged a bronze medal play-off against Wang Xin, another Chinese competitor. However, their match would be short-lived as Wang was forced to leave the game early in the second due to injury. India’s first-ever badminton medal at the Olympics was won by Saina Nehwal!
After winning the Australian Open twice, the India Open, and the China Open in the ensuing three years, Nehwal returned home a hero and her already growing reputation was further cemented. Since PV Sindhu was starting to establish herself on the BWF women’s singles circuit, Nehwal had already defeated her in their only previous meeting, the 2014 India Open final.
Nehwal also started working with a new coach, Vimal Kumar, who took over and assisted her in reaching a new professional milestone. Nehwal rose to the top of the global rankings in April 2015, becoming the first Indian player to do so. She also made it to the All England Open final, when she was defeated by Olympic winner Carolina Marin of Spain.
Nehwal had a decline in performance and a slew of bothersome ailments following that, but there was still reason for happiness when she reunited with her mentor Pullela Gopichand. She won her second Commonwealth Games championship eight years after her first, defeating PV Sindhu in the gold medal match in 2018. Later in the year, she added an Asian Games bronze, which she lost to eventual victor Tai Tzu-ying in the semifinals.
In a private ceremony held in Hyderabad that same year, Nehwal wed fellow badminton star Parupalli Kashyap, marking a significant milestone in her personal life. Saina Nehwal had a few years of illness and injury, which prevented her from qualifying for the Tokyo Games, but she still has an remarkable series of accomplishments. The Indian shuttler has won over 24 international badminton trophies in her 12-year career, 11 of which have been Superseries wins.
In addition, she is the only Indian to have taken home a medal in each of the three major BWF competitions: the World Championships, the World Junior Championships, and the coveted bronze medal from the Olympics.