Interview: Lakshya Sen, rested and rejuvenated, aims to bounce back after tough start to 2023 season

Lakshya Sen is one of those athletes from the younger generation who knows how to use social media well. He is a popular athlete in the badminton world now, as one could see at the All England Open recently when fans called out for selfies with him after his impressive opening round win against Chou Tien Chen, the fifth seed at the event. It was, arguably, his best performance of 2023 till then and he was soaking it all in after a hard-fought result.

In the next round, he couldn’t get past Anders Antonsen in a repeat of last year’s clash at the same stage. With that, another tournament where the Indian rising star had done so well in 2022 (reaching the final), witnessed an early exit in 2023.

A couple of days later, Sen posted a photo of a team dinner on Instagram with his coach Anup Sridhar, mentor Vimal Kumar and physiotherapist Heath Matthews. The responses to the post ranged from lecturing him on his diet to suggesting he was losing focus on the sport because of his brand building. It wasn’t much different when he posted a photo from Switzerland a few days later, where he was playing at the Swiss Open.

All this...

Read more