World number one Tai Tzu Ying has announced that she would hang her boots after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and her primary goal now was to win the world championship and Olympic gold, Malaysian newspaper The Star Online reported on Saturday.
The 24-year-old, who has been one of the most dominant figure in the badminton circuit since August 2016, is yet to win a medal in both the mega events. The Chinese Taipei shuttler feels her career will feel complete if she wins a medal in Tokyo but insisted that she will quit irrespective of her performance in the Japanese capital.
“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 as saying by the paper.
“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,” said the shuttler, who has slipped from the number one world ranking for just two weeks in April last year since December 2016.
Tzu-Ying was favourite to end her medal drought at the 2018 world championship in China but lost to He Bingjiao in the quarterfinals and had skipped the 2017 edition for the World University Games in Taipei. She had lost to PV Sindhu in the 2016 Rio Olympics pre-quarterfinal round.
The gifted shuttler, who reached the finals of the Malaysian Open on Saturday, would just be 26 in 2020 but explained why she won’t want to continue any further. “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.”
