Lakshya Sen’s journey from Almora to stardom

Mumbai: A small-town boy’s journey to international badminton success – that in a nutshell is the story of India’s rising badminton star Lakshya Sen, who finished runner-up in the prestigious All England Open on Sunday. Born in Almora, a cantonment town in Kumaon Hills of Uttarakhand, the 20-year-old has faced various trials and tribulations as […]

Mumbai: A small-town boy’s journey to international badminton success – that in a nutshell is the story of India’s rising badminton star Lakshya Sen, who finished runner-up in the prestigious All England Open on Sunday.

Born in Almora, a cantonment town in Kumaon Hills of Uttarakhand, the 20-year-old has faced various trials and tribulations as he chased his dream of making it big in badminton.

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Coming from a badminton family – his grandfather was a national-level player, father D K Sen is a senior coach with Prakash Padukone Academy in Bengaluru and brother Chirag Sen is a player and was ranked World No. 2 in Junior Rankings in 2016 – Lakshya was a successful junior player who is now blazing a trail in the senior circuit.

Lakshya Sen’s journey to his current ranking of World number 11 in BWF rankings, has not been easy and the 20-year-old had to clear a couple of bottlenecks on his way to success. The first big change in his life came in 2013 when his father DK Sen took him to the Prakash Padukone Academy in Bengaluru to train under U Vimal Kumar and Prakash Padukone. That helped Lakshya carve a path to the top of the junior circuit, becoming World No 1 junior player in 2017.

The transition from a top junior player to success in the senior circuit has proved a bottleneck for many players and Lakshya, too, was getting bogged down by the tribulations when he had a short stint at the academy run by Danish legend Morten Frost. They worked on his strength and stamina, making Lakshya realise how to summon the last bit of energy to execute the next smash even when the body was unwilling to go on.

Lakshya, who had a brilliant year in 2018 winning bronze at World Junior Championships, gold at Asian Juniors and gold in mixed team and silver in men’s singles at Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, made a successful entry winning a couple of Super 100 titles.

He was greatly benefited from a two-week training stint with Olympic Champion Viktor Axelsen in August 2021. Axelsen had invited Lakshya along with Loh Kean Yew of Singapore, the current World Champion, Brian Yang of Canada, Toby Penty of Denmark, and Felix Burestedt of Sweden to train with him in Dubai. Lakshya later said he learned a lot about training methods, strengthening and conditioning during that stint.

It is that stint with Axelsen which has eventually put Lakshya on course to his recent success, taking him to the verge of a place in the Top-10 in the World.

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