Kidambi Srikanth admits to losing sleep after narrowly missing out on Olympic medal

Srikanth had a memorable Olympics last year as he first beat Lino Munoz and Henri Hurskainen, before upsetting The World No 5 Jan O Jorgensen 21-19, 21-19 to make the quarter-finals. But Srikanth was narrowly beaten by the two-time Olympic Champion from China and the former world no.3 acknowledged the disappointment of defeat to TOI saying that he had spent sleepless nights in the wake of the result.

“But that changed me as a player. I lost the most important match of my career, and there won't be anything bigger than that for sure. I stopped thinking after a while, and looked at winning because all I know is badminton. The next tournament I played after the Olympics was the Japan Open, where I played Kashyap in the first round and Ajay in the second round, which felt like I was playing a national tournament. I just wanted to go play well and not think about what had happened in Rio."

Srikanth was laid low by injuries after the Olympics and he spoke of his comeback to fitness saying, “You need to have a base fitness before you start playing tournaments. I was lacking that before I started playing international tournaments in March. Until the Olympics, I had about 70-75% of base fitness throughout the year, and I was able to train for two weeks before a tournament to get back to 90-95% base fitness. But over the past six-odd months I was at about 15-20% base fitness, so I had to really push myself to get to 75-80%. It was satisfying to play well in Singapore, though the end result could have been a lot better. That said, going into the tournament I didn't believe that I would be in the final. A quarter-final would do, was the way I looked at it. Doing well in Singapore gave me a lot of  confidence."

Prior to his injury though, Srikanth had a hugely successful year in 2016, apart from his Olympic exploits he won two gold medals in the men's team and singles events at the South Asian Games.