The distance between Ryo and Tokyo is approximately 18560 km, over 10000 nautical miles. For PV Sindhu, if measured in medals, the distance is determined by a silver and a bronze. In sporting terms, three World Championship finals, one title in between. In sports terms, Musashino Forest Sports Plaza in Tokyo had a newfound versatility, a wide range of shots and an insatiable appetite for the big game. Only she can tell who became the first Indian woman to win two Olympic medals. But to the outside world, it is marked by such a rare change in Indian female athletes that it is neither clearly defined nor identified.
Sindhu, arguably India's greatest Olympian, is unquestionably her own personality today. At one point in the race for Tokyo, he told Outlook magazine, "Instead of thinking for others, I have to play well for myself. If I do well, I do well for India and everyone will be happy."
Very few Indian athletes, no matter the women, offer the idea as part of their Olympic preparation. Talking about thinking for yourself is not part of others' plan, and for women, talking about it is certainly not acceptable, not for the majority anyway. It's head down, do your stuff, say little, rock no boat.
Unlike Sania Mirza or Jwala Gutta or her great rival Saina Nehwal, Sindhu isn't the most outspoken of speakers, but she has passed through these Olympics with her shoulders more square and her gaze more direct. She will still remain soft spoken and polite and will go through endless rounds of congratulations with her most respectful and charming face. But between Rio and Tokyo, Sindhu has created an aura of running her life by her own rules.
It is a road seldom undertaken by Indian female athletes, for whom emerging from outside the shadow of a powerful male figure is downright rebellious. Be it the coach or in some cases the parents. It is easy to interpret that as a sign of disrespect or displeasure by many, especially male, commentators. For an Indian female athlete, as we see through Sindhu, it becomes an opportunity to stretch one's own boundaries.
Since Rio, he has worked with three other coaches in addition to his original mentor Pullela Gopichand, who set him on the road to an Olympic silver medal in the first half of his career. Two of the other coaches, Indonesian Mulyo Handyo and Korean Kim Ji Hyun, went abruptly over a span of three years during which Sindhu made three World Championship finals by winning the title in August 2019. His current coach was hired by Park Tae Sang. The Sports Authority of India was appointed as the men's singles coach before starting working with Sindhu from September 2019.
The pandemic and the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics by a year were to give athletes an unexpected off-season of introspection. Who knows how the Games could have been organized for him in 2020? For Sindhu, the postponement left her to make an unexpected decision.
In October 2020, she suddenly left for the UK, traveling abroad alone for the first time in her life. Usually, he was accompanied by the Indian contingent or support staff or one of his parents. Here she was, at the age of 25, on a plane to England in the midst of a global pandemic. On social media, she revealed that she was in the UK to work with a sports nutritionist and make the Gatorade Sports Science Institute her base and train with English badminton players.
After three tournaments in Thailand till January 2021, he was to return to India only three months later. The increasing distance between Gopichand and Sindhu and her team became the subject of much discussion in the run-up to Tokyo. Whatever the dynamics of that situation, Indian athletes are usually no different from the coaches under which they rise to the top, certainly not months before the Olympics. Saina carried on for three years, only to return to Gopichand after Rio, but Sindhu made sure there was no ambiguity about the situation.
He switched from Gopichand Academy with Park to train at the Gachibowli Indoor Stadium, saying in various interviews that he enjoyed working with different coaches. She was careful in calling herself the 'daughter' of her trainers, saying that Gopi was part of her 'journey'. But then added, "You get to learn different things from different coaches. At the end of the day, a player has to imbibe and decide what's best for him."
As a coach who developed her game in her teens, Gopichand could have asked Sindhu in her early 20s to shout on the court and hand over her mobile phone and she would do so. (Kidambi Srikanth was asked to hand over his phone, but did not delete his WhatsApp and social media). Today, it is quite plausible that neither Sindhu would take such orders nor Park would go down that path.
Park's approach to her coaching may be animated, but that is not in Sindhu's face. It has given him the freedom to make his own decisions - especially when under pressure from the courts. Find your own way to think for yourself, and add feedback to add another layer to your on-court experience. She says she knows when to intervene, step up and read for herself about her opponent's playing position and skills. For an adult athlete, this is a place to grow, to breathe. With our female athletes, this is not a normal situation.
The Gurushishya parampara/Dronacharya tradition prevalent in Indian sports can become claustrophobic and alluring with genuine affection and complete dedication to a common cause, and benefit neither the coach nor the ward. This limits our athletes much more than we'd like to admit. In Tokyo, the exchanges were equal but we can tell which of them came first. She, the elite athlete, hoped that Park's professional coach would assist and improve her, which she did. The mutual affection and respect between the two was visible after Sindhu's victory over He Bingjiao.
Yet, soon after his victory, when he raised his arms to the sky and the loudest of screams erupted in the vast, empty stadium, it was only for him. There she was, without the roar of the crowd, without the usual clamor of victory around her. PV Sindhu, a champion in her own right.