The Guest · Sport · Season 07

Saina Nehwal.

Olympic Medallist · Former World No. 1, Badminton

Saina Nehwal is the player who made Indian badminton expect to win. At London 2012 she took bronze, the first Olympic medal India had ever won in the sport, and in April 2015 became the first Indian woman to hold the world No. 1 ranking. She had already won the World Junior Championships in 2008, another Indian first; she went on to take silver at the 2015 World Championships and bronze in 2017, Commonwealth Games singles gold in both 2010 and 2018, and an Asian Games bronze in 2018 — twenty-four international titles in all, ten of them BWF Superseries. She trained in Hyderabad under Pullela Gopichand and, for three years, in Bengaluru under U. Vimal Kumar, and spent the back half of her career on a knee that never fully recovered from an injury at Rio 2016. In January 2026 she confirmed the retirement her body had forced two years earlier, arthritis having made elite training impossible. A Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri, Khel Ratna and Arjuna awardee, she now works on grassroots badminton and on getting structured sport into Indian schools.