Taipei: With the Tokyo Olympics just 29 days away, the World No. 1 women’s single-player, Tai Tzu Ying of Taiwan, was optimistic about the opportunity of winning gold at the Olympics.
In an interview with Badminton World Federation (BWF), Tai admitted that the Olympics was a very sacred and significant event and hoped that she could do better than the last two editions.
“This Olympics could be my last major tournament before I hang up my racket. I have yet to decide if I’ll continue to play after the Olympics this year,” said Tai.
“When I played in my first Olympics in London, I was very young. In my second Olympics in Rio, I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I was injured. That’s why my performance wasn’t ideal,” explained Tai.
“As for this Olympics, I feel that I’ve reached a satisfactory level in match performance. However, I cannot underestimate other players too,” added Tai.
“The Olympics will be a big challenge for me because I can’t control my level of play to be at the best in order to win matches. Because I am older now, after four years. Oh no, should be after five years,” smiled Tai Tzu Ying.
Many tournaments have been canceled or postponed since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tai said there’re a lot of uncertainties caused by COVID-19.
“During the All England last year, I was slightly distracted by the pandemic and didn’t perform well in my first few games. At that time, I saw that the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the UK was increasing every day. We also had to follow strict COVID-19 prevention measures imposed by the Taiwan government on people returning from the UK. We must be quarantined for 14 days when arriving in Taiwan. After the 14-day quarantined, I was in a very bad condition when going back to training. I could only adjust slowly and focused on practice all the time. And there’s no real feel of competing in tournaments to make me more motivated during the practice.”
After the reigning Olympic champion, Carolina Marin of Spain had withdrawn from the Olympics due to injury to her left ACL, Tai and other world’s top eight players, including Chen Yufei (China), Nozomi Okuhara (Japan), Akane Yamaguchi (Japan), Ratchanok Intanon (Thailand), PV Sindhu (India), and An Seyoung (Korea), all have a fighting chance to win gold in Tokyo.
At the end of the interview, Tai promised that she will try her best to prepare for the Olympics and looking forward to achieving good results in the Olympics by bringing back a medal.
