Shortly after noon (around 4:30 pm, IST) on Saturday, India’s ace shuttler Pusarla Venkata Sindhu will open her bid for a hat-trick of Olympic medals by stepping on to the Porte de la Chapelle courts in Paris against Fathimath Nabaaha Abdul Razzaq of the Maldives, a rank minnow at 111 in the Badminton World 
Federation (BWF) women’s singles rankings.

PV seeded 10th 

For the 10th-seed Indian, who won a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Games, the round-robin Group M outing against the 25-year-old Maldivian, four years her junior, should be a breeze. It is equally unlikely that Sindhu will be tested in her second and final group clash against World No. 74 Kristin Kuuba of Estonia. But from that point onwards, Sindhu will have her work cut out. In the round of 16 she could be up against No. 6 seed, China’s He Bing Jiao, whom she had tamed in the bronze medal play-off at the Tokyo Olympics. The Chinese left-hander is a far improved player from what she was three years ago, while Sindhu has had an ordinary season in 2024, before desperately seeking the help of 1980 All England champion, Prakash Padukone, in her quest for an unprecedented third Olympic medal.