Relentless Saina pushes limits, shows the way for Gen Next Today Sports News

Some athletes enchant. Others enable. Saina Nehwal belongs firmly to the latter. She did not decorate the sport; she made it survivable for the next generation. Watching Nehwal was never about aesthetics. It was about her conviction and the stubborn belief that she would hold a little longer even when the lungs burned, muscles screamed in pain and the legs turned heavy.

Gill Clark once wrote that champions relentlessly push their limits and refuse to give up — a mindset so ingrained that stopping feels like a contradiction of who they are. Which is why retirement is rarely announced when it actually happens. The body gives up long before the mind accepts it.

For nearly two years, Saina knew that her knee could not cope with elite training, but it was only last week that she brought down the curtains on her decorated career. Cartilage degeneration and arthritis. A body that once tolerated eight or nine hours of work now surrendering in one or two. “I had stopped playing two years ago. I actually felt that I entered the sport on my own terms and left on my own terms,” Saina, on a podcast, spoke about why she saw no urgency to announce her retirement. “If you are not capable of playing anymore, that is it. It is fine.” Perhaps she needed time not to decide, but to accept.

By then, there was nothing left to prove. She had already done the harder work — holding the door open long enough for others to walk in.

The burden of firsts

Badminton ran in her blood from the start. Born in Haryana in 1990, Saina was introduced to the sport by her mother Usha, a former State-level player, when she was eight. But before that, she had a tryst with karate, a sport she took up because badminton coaching was scarce in the state. She even went on to earn a brown belt before her family moved to Hyderabad. At 13, she joined the Pullela Gopichand Academy, and her path became clear.

In 2006, at just 16, the then youngster arrived at the Philippines Open as an unseeded teenager and left as the champion. Along the way, she stunned higher-ranked opponents, including Germany’s Xu Huaiwen and Japan’s Ai Goto, to become the first Indian woman to not only reach but also win a four-star international tournament.

It was an achievement that arrived too early considering the system around her. India was not yet prepared to process a teenage girl winning abroad in a sport that barely occupied space in public consciousness. Saina herself seemed surprised by it. She said she simply played her “natural game” and let the rest happen.

Two years later, in Pune, she became the world junior champion beating Japan’s Sayako Sato in the final and was the first Indian to achieve the feat. Winning on home soil should have felt like a coronation. Instead, it felt like a contract. The runner-up at the previous junior Worlds in Korea had become the standard bearer.

The real rupture came in Jakarta in 2009. At the Indonesia Open, one of the most unforgiving stops on the circuit, Saina beat China’s Lin Wang in a final that swung violently in momentum. She lost the first game, recovered in the second, and then surged through the decider with an audacity that felt unfamiliar for an Indian player on that stage. When she lifted the trophy, she became the first Indian to win a Super Series title. It remains one of the most important wins of her career because it signalled that Indian badminton was no longer aspirational. It was competitive.

Firsts followed, bringing with them a growing weight of expectation.

At the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, Saina became the first Indian to win women’s singles gold, surviving a match point before turning the final against Wong Mew Choo of Malaysia into an assertion of nerve and stamina. That same year, she became the first Indian woman to win a medal (bronze) at the Asian Championships.

In 2011, she won the Swiss Open and the very next year, she claimed the crown at the Denmark Open, one of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious tournaments. Each title pushed her into spaces Indian women had never stood before.

The 2012 London Olympics changed everything. Saina secured India’s first badminton medal at the Olympics and became only the second Indian woman overall, after legendary weightlifter Karnam Malleswari, to make the podium at the quadrennial extravaganza. The bronze came in strange circumstances, with China’s Wang Xin injured in the playoff and retiring with a painful knee while leading 21-18, 1-0.

What is often forgotten is the path that led there. A semifinal draw with three Chinese players. Staying fit became her competitive advantage. As coach P. Gopi Chand pointed out, “there was no doubt Saina richly deserved the Olympic medal for her pioneering campaign for Indian badminton, after making the quarterfinals of Beijing as a smart 18-year-old with so much promise.”

In 2014, she guided Indian women to their first Uber Cup medal, remaining unbeaten throughout the campaign. In the same year, she won the China Open Super Series Premier becoming the first Indian woman to conquer badminton’s most intimidating territory. Beating top Chinese players on their home soil made it one of her most symbolic title victories. The then World No. 5 Indian prevailed 21-12, 22-20 over a 17-year-old Akane Yamaguchi in a 42-minute final.

Then, in April 2015, the Indian ace rose to World No. 1, holding that spot for 14 weeks, nine of them uninterrupted. She was the first non-Chinese woman since Denmark’s Tine Baun in 2010 to climb the peak and the first Indian to get there since Prakash Padukone had reached No.1 in the men’s game 35 years earlier.

When she won the All England Open later that year, she became the first Indian woman to lift one of the sport’s most storied trophies. By then, her career had become a map of thresholds crossed. Each victory carried not just personal meaning. Each ‘first’ stretched the imagination of what Indian badminton, especially the women shuttlers, could be.

Rivals who defined her

The pathbreaker’s career would not have been the one it was without the players who forced her to confront the limits of her game. When Saina squared up against Tai Tzu Ying, contrasting styles collided. Tai’s gift for slowing rallies, disguising her shots and bending angles posed problems that Saina’s direct, stamina-driven game struggled to solve. Their rivalry tilted decisively in Tai’s favour: Saina won only five of their 20 meetings. Ratchanok Intanon brought grace of a similar kind, but with a more classical, readable rhythm. Her artistry invited long rallies rather than scrambles. Here, Saina’s endurance usually prevailed as she won 12 of their 20 encounters.

Then there was Carolina Marin’s speed, aggression and left-handed ferocity. Against Marin, Saina ran into a version of the game that arrived too fast, too sharp. Their rivalry was almost perfectly balanced with Marin edging it 7-6.

Above all was China. For years, the Chinese wall felt immovable. Wang Yihan, in particular, became a recurring barrier. Saina lost more often than she won (five victories against 11 defeats) and quarterfinal exits began to pile up. Alongside Wang Yihan stood Wang Shixian, who turned rallies into marathons and pushed Saina into exhausting exchanges, their head-to-head locked at seven wins apiece. And there was London Olympic champion Li Xuerui; her rise coincided with Saina’s own Olympic peak and her dominance over the Indian with a 12-2 record reflected the gap in the systems of the two countries.

Then came Jakarta, 2015. When Saina beat Wang Yihan in the World championships quarterfinals, it was more relief than victory. Years of unfinished business boiled down to one long, draining encounter. That win ensured her first World championships medal and triggered something unprecedented: for the first time, no Chinese woman made it to the semifinals.

And even as those battles faded, new ones emerged. Nozomi Okuhara brought relentless defence and speed, at a time when Saina’s body was beginning to fray. At home, P. V. Sindhu became a mirror, a reminder that the sport she once dominated was moving beyond her.

The price of politics

At her peak, the former World No. 1 enjoyed near-unanimous adoration. That, too, changed.

Saina’s decision to step into politics altered the nature of her public life. In 2021, she joined the BJP at a ceremony in New Delhi, speaking of her admiration for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and expressing a desire to contribute beyond sport. Party leaders hailed her as a ‘youth icon’ and cited her achievements as national pride. In an increasingly polarised climate, the move blurred the line between Saina the athlete and Saina the political figure. Online spaces that had once celebrated her victories argued over her choices.

Politics may have complicated how she was received, but it cannot rewrite what she did. Honoured with the Arjuna Award, Khel Ratna, Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan, Saina’s sporting legacy rests on achievements that remain unquestioned.

What she left behind

India had produced highly successful badminton players before Saina. Prakash Padukone and Gopi Chand had won at the highest level. Players like Jwala Gutta had shown that Indian women could compete on the global stage. But it was Saina who sparked a badminton revolution in her home country, as Clark observed.

Today, India has 11 men and 12 women players ranked in the world’s top-100 in singles, placing it among the most represented badminton nations globally. That depth did not arrive by accident. It arrived because belief became institutional.

Saina may not have been the most naturally gifted. What she built instead was a career on hard work, mental toughness, and absolute refusal to give up. Indian badminton will move on — stronger, deeper, louder. But it will always move on the ground she flattened first.