Tai Tzu Ying to hang up boots after 2020 Tokyo Olympics
World Number one Taiwanese shuttler Tai Tzu Ying has announced that she would be retiring from the sport altogether after Tokyo Olympics next year regardless of her winning a medal or not. The 24-year-old has won gold medals in the 2018 Asian Games and the 2017 and 2018 Asian championships.
PV Sindhu and her contemporaries will let a huge sigh of relief after Ying’s announcement owing to her supreme dominance on the international circuit since August 2016. The Kaohsiung-born stated that she would be walking away from the sport whether she wins the upcoming World Championships and the Olympics or not.
“I’ve not won the big ones even though I’ve been at the top of the rankings for some time. So all my focus is on winning the World Championship in Basel (Switzerland) this year (in August) and the Olympic gold next year,” Tzu-Ying was quoted by Malaysian newspaper The Star Online.
“My badminton career will be complete if I can win a medal at the Olympics but whether I win a medal or not, I’ll still retire.”
The immensely gifted shuttler had seen herself go down from the number one world ranking for just two weeks in April last year since she reached there in December 2016. However, despite all her achievements she has faltered repeatedly at the biggest of stages. While she had to Sindhu in the 2016 Rio Olympics, she had skipped the World University Games in Taipei before losing to He Bingjiao at the 2018 world championship in China.
Though Ying defeated World No. 3 Chen Yufei at Malaysia Open on Saturday 21-14, 21-19 to reach the final of the Super 750 tournament and is still going very strong at her job, she has been of the opinion that she has given the sport her all for quite some time now.
“I’ve given my all to badminton for 10 years and that is enough for me. I’ve to run on the court more than most players to cover my weaknesses because of my small size, so I think it’s enough,” she added.
Ying won her first title in 2011 US Open Grand Prix Gold at the age of 17 before going on to win the Superseries Finals in 2014 and Superseries Premiere event, Indonesia Open, in 2016. Winning six consecutive titles between 2016 and 2017, she was on a 27-match winning streak since losing to Sung Ji-Hyun at the Superseries Finals. Apart from that, she won the All England Open back to back in 2017 and 2018, and the Hong Kong Super Series in 2014, 2016, and 2017.
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