BWF World Championships: Fitter and still hungry, PV Sindhu chases history at home

Seven years is a long time to carry an ache. For PV Sindhu, it has lasted since Basel, where she last stood on a World Championships podium. Since then, the two-time Olympic medallist has watched the tournament come and go without her name on it, even as she remained, by her own record, the most decorated woman in its history. | When and where to watch SIndhu in action |

Now the wait comes to New Delhi, to the Indira Gandhi Indoor Arena, and to a crowd that will not need reminding what is at stake: a sixth World Championships medal, one that would pull her level with no one and leave her, alone, at the top of a list she currently shares with China’s Zhang Ning.

She could not have picked a better moment to arrive at that number. Sindhu ended a two-year title drought at the Japan Open earlier this year, and if the seven-year wait for a Worlds medal has weighed on her, that win seems to have lifted something.

“I think it definitely gives me a lot of confidence,” she said on the eve of her first-round match in Delhi.

“Of course, I’m really looking forward to the World Championships to start. Since it’s happening in India, I think it’s really exciting.”

She was relaxed at that press conference, even playful, a shuttler who looked like she was enjoying herself again rather than merely enduring the circuit. She trained alongside Ayush Shetty in the build-up, both of them overseen by coach Irwansyah, and by most accounts around the venue, she has looked sharp.

SCIENCE IN THE SHADOWS

But the real story of this Sindhu, the 2026 version rather than the one who won gold in 2019, sits somewhere less visible than a scoreline. It is in the sports science room.

Vimal Kumar, who has watched Sindhu’s career from close quarters and spoke to India Today in 2025 about the need for her to manage her tour schedule more sustainably as she got older, sees the difference plainly now.

“At her level, more than anything else, the S&C plays a major role. How you take care of your body is very important,” he said.
“Her fitness team is also working very diligently. You can’t kill her every session. It has been very systematic. Those are aspects we have improved. She looked good to me.”

Sindhu herself is unusually candid about how deliberately that team has been built.

“I’ve had a really good team around me, and we had to build that team. It took some time,” she said.

“When we got the whole team together in terms of sports science, physio and the trainer, I think we all came together, we sat down, we just noted down what is required and what is needed. We discussed it with the coach and we had to improve on those things.”

The names behind that process are now familiar around the Indian camp: Heera Mundluru as physio, Shreyasi Sanjay on strength and conditioning, nutritionist Nicol Haria tracking every meal, and Wayne Lombard on sports science.

What has changed, Sindhu explained, is less about pushing harder and more about pushing smarter.

“You have all these gadgets now to record your strain, how tired you are, can you push yourself or not,” Sindhu, who is seen sporting a tracking device on her forehead, said.

“These are some metrics where you make sure and take precautions that, okay, maybe tomorrow it’s a different kind of training that you do.”

It is the kind of unglamorous detail that rarely makes a highlights reel, but by her own account it is the difference between a career winding down and one finding a second wind.

“Physically and mentally, it’s been quite good,” she said.

“I’m able to actually see the changes in my game and in my movement.”

PV Sindhu’s potential road to final

• 1st round: Sophia Noble (Ireland) – ranked 141
• 2nd round: Wen Yu Zhang (Taipei) – ranked 49
• Round of 16: Wang Zhi Yi (China) – Ranked 3
• Quarterfinal: Putri Kusuma Wardani (Indonesia) – Ranked 6
• Semifinal: An Se Young (Korea) – Ranked 1
• Final: Akane Yamaguchi (Japan) – Ranked 3

DECISIVE AT THE NET

Vimal Kumar’s technical notes for this campaign go further than fitness alone. He wants her dominant at the net, not merely tidy there.

“It doesn’t mean only playing good tumbles. It is also the ability to control the shuttle and play deep into the court with fast pushes,” he said, adding that her height should be an asset rather than something to manage around.

“Sindhu is tall, I keep telling her that her lunge is important at the net… you can’t keep hitting into the hands, you have to find the lines.”

In Delhi’s big hall, he added, the shuttle floats differently, and timing in the opening days will matter more than usual.

If the S&C overhaul explains the body, it is the losses that explain the mind. Sindhu traces her toughness back to defeats as much as titles, particularly the 2017 final in Glasgow, an hour and fifteen minutes against Nozomi Okuhara that slipped away 22-20.

“I was very hard on myself because I was like, I was almost there but I couldn’t get that gold,” she said. “That itself, I think that made me much stronger.”

A repeat disappointment followed in 2018, when a first-game lead evaporated into another final lost. Seven years on, she insists the fire from those nights has not dimmed.

“The hunger towards the game hasn’t changed. I know it is in me and I can still do it,” she said.

The draw will test all of it.

Sindhu opens against Ireland’s Sophia Noble, a routine enough assignment for the ninth seed. A third-round meeting with China’s third seed Wang Zhi Yi looms as the first real examination; Sindhu trails their head-to-head 3-5 but beat Wang at last year’s Worlds, evidence, if any were needed, that she raises her game when it matters most.

Beyond that sits Olympic champion An Se Young, the World No. 1 against whom Sindhu is still winless in 10 meetings, and who arrives carrying a heavily taped knee.

None of that has dimmed what Sindhu has said all week about playing this tournament on her own soil.

“The Indian crowd is going to support, I would say, and I’m really happy that we are playing the World Championships in India and get to play at the home ground,” she said.

“I hope there is a lot of support and I hope I get another medal.”

Seven years is a long wait. Delhi is where she wants it to end.

– Ends