Paris 2024: With bronze in sight, Lakshya caves in to the pressure

Paris: As the shuttle brushed his knee and landed on his side of the court, Lakshya Sen looked across to Lee Zii Jia. The Malaysian walked up to the net and the two exchanged a lengthy embrace, after which the Indian stood and acknowledged the crowd.

Lakshya then trudged towards his box and slammed the racquet on his bag.

It was the first real display of frustration from the youngster. Otherwise, it was all sadness. Of not just losing the bronze medal men’s singles match but caving in spectacularly in it. Of letting a match slip out in no time that was well within grasp. Of having to live with a similar feeling twice in two days. Of falling painstakingly short of a medal after just about qualifying for the Olympics and wriggling out of a difficult group stage draw.

Up in the first game and away to a five-point lead in the second against the Malaysian Lee, Lakshya somehow found himself down during the third game and soon out. The bronze medal, which would’ve been a first by a male in Indian badminton history, had somehow gone from being extremely close to eerily afar. And all the first-time Olympian could take away was a 21-13, 16-21, 11-21 scoreline.

As those numbers stayed put for a while on the giant screen on the court, Lakshya walked off the court. A few moments later, he was largely at a loss of words to explain it all.

“How do I start?” he said, his first few words barely audible.

How about when the sensational slide started, at 21-13, 8-3 as Lee won eight straight points and zoomed past in a flash to leave him in a state of blur?

“I started this match really well, but couldn’t keep the lead. Once he started playing well, it was hard for me to find the answers in the rallies,” Lakshya said, the first sentence he could barely piece together.

Lakshya had hoped to find the answers to something similar a day earlier on Sunday. Then, against the eventual gold medallist Viktor Axelsen, he let a 20-17 edge in the first game and 7-0 gap in the second go up in the air to lose in straight games. Axelsen, from his own experience, was sure the Indian’s mind, looking too far ahead, faltered there. Maybe it did again with a lot more to lose the next day.

“Mind training is important,” the legendary Prakash Padukone, Lakshya’s mentor who was seated courtside, told reporters after the match. “Across sports, we don’t give enough attention to sports psychology, which is very important. Especially in the Olympics.”

In his young and promising career, Lakshya has been there and done that several times — at the 2021 World Championships (bronze), at the 2022 Commonwealth Games (gold), during India’s 2022 Thomas Cup triumph. He even beat the same opponent earlier this year at the All England Championships. The Olympics, and its “lot of unexpected moments”, as Lee put it, was where the mind did not complement the body.

“At times when the score is crucial, you have to be mentally really strong. Credit to him (Lee), he played a solid game in the second,” Lakshya said.

Lakshya was solid all through the first game and the first bit of the second. He was sharp, his smashes were sensational and, unlike against Axelsen, he pounced to convert the first game point opportunity. Opening an early lead in the second, a lucky net chord too dropped the shuttle on the other side. Everything seemed to be going Lakshya’s way. Until everything went the other.

A couple of errors into the net from Lakshya kickstarted a run of eight straight points by Lee. At the break, coach Vimal Kumar rushed to Lakshya, perhaps sensing a tipping point. Lakshya rallied to make it 12 points apiece, but Lee was at it again, revving up the pace and intensity behind his strokes and forcing Lakshya to go into the defensive.

“I tried to turn the game to an attacking game,” Lee said.

It left Lakshya bruised, literally too as his right elbow had to be frequently attended to and taped. Lee raced to a 9-2 lead in the decider after a tentative back line misjudgement by the Indian. Lakshya was clouded. Lee was thunderous. At 16-8, the Malaysian leapt forward full stretch, both legs up in the air, put the shuttle back dipping across, got up on his feet and placed it over the Indian’s head. It was the first point Lee celebrated animatedly as Lakshya stood stunned at the net.

Lakshya remained so after the match. Padukone minced no words in saying it was introspection time for the youngster.

“Ultimately, even the federation, the foundation, the academies can only do so much. Ultimately players also have to take responsibility and go and deliver when it matters the most,” Padukone said. “They have beaten the same players in some other tournaments. So when it comes to the Olympics, we are not able to… we need to introspect, the players also need to introspect, ‘okay, am I doing enough?’

“Maybe the players are not working hard enough. Maybe it is not enough to get a medal at the Olympics.”

Indeed, the Olympics of maybes this will be for Lakshya.