Badminton: How Lakshya Sen reduced his workload to rebuild his game, piece by piece for Paris 2024
Sen was on a run of eight consecutive first-round defeats earlier this season but managed to turn his fortunes and earn Olympic qualification.
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A column of reporters swarmed around Lakshya Sen, like bees to honey, on a cold January afternoon in New Delhi. The same question kept cropping up asking about the shuttler’s torrid run of form.
This was on the sidelines of the 2024 India Open Super 750, minutes after Sen had lost to compatriot and good friend Priyanshu Rajawat in the men’s singles opening round at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium. A week earlier, he had started his 2024 season with a first-round loss at the Malaysia Open Super 1000 in Kuala Lumpur.
Sen was in dire straits. The India Open marked his eighth straight first-round exit in a World Tour event. He had fallen to No 19 in the BWF Race to Paris Olympics ranking – only the top 16 would qualify for the Games.
Struggling to gather his thoughts, Sen muttered, “I think I can’t answer that right now [on the future], I am still in the game. I don’t know what to say.”
That dejected and beaten image of Sen was from not too long ago. But in the four months that have followed, the 22-year-old from Almora, Uttarakhand, turned things around with consistent performances in the European circuit.
The 2024 Paris Olympics qualification window closed in April, and Sen managed to...
