From spending time in a hypoxic chamber to sparring with a variety of partners to adapt to different styles, Indian badminton ace PV Sindhu has left no stone unturned to be battle-ready for the Paris Games, where she will be chasing an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic medal.
Sindhu’s form has been patchy of late but she says the hat-trick of medals is very much possible because the last eight months spent with mentor Prakash Padukone has instilled confidence in her.
No Indian player has won three Olympic medals on the trot and a podium finish will make Sindhu arguably India’s greatest athlete.
“I am aiming for a medal, definitely, yes. Whether it’s one or two or three, it doesn’t matter. I’ve won two medals and I don’t want to take pressure by thinking that, ‘Oh, what is the third one’,” she said after a training session at Porte de la Chapelle Arena here.
“Every time I play Olympics, it’s a new Olympics for me. So every time I go out there, I want to get a medal and, hopefully, I will do that hat-trick soon.”
Sindhu had won silver and bronze in the last two Olympics at Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, respectively.
Before coming to Paris, Sindhu trained at Sportcampus Saar in Saarbrucken,
Germany, where the altitude, the weather, and the conditions are similar to the French capital.
There she created a hypoxic chamber (low oxygen) in her room and slept for a
couple of days. Hypoxic chambers help prepare an athlete’s body to function at higher-altitude places.
“I couldn’t go to the high-altitude training centre. I didn’t have much time... So I just thought it would be good for me if, instead of going somewhere, I could get it here and do some changes and sleep that way,” she explained.
Sindhu said she has improved her strokes and is more consistent during the long rallies. “Much more confident in strokes,” she replied when asked what difference
she finds after training with Padukone.
“In women’s singles now, there are a lot of long rallies and long matches... I am confident in that now,” she said.
“With every opponent, it’s a different style and you need to play the right stroke at the right time. And that’s what Prakash Sir also keeps saying. We’ve been working on that. And that’s almost there. There’s a lot of improvement. You will see that on court.”
The 29-year-old also shared her training regime in Germany, where she sparred with all kinds of players and sometimes competed against two players at the same time.
“Saarbrucken training was really good.”
