French Open Badminton: Former Indian champions of the tournament
The French Open, which is an annual October event held in Stade Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, has made itself an inseparable part of the badminton calendar. Starting off way back in 1909, the tournament suffered several interruptions only to come back better than ever before.
With the 2018 French Open offering a lump some $750,000, the Super 750 tournament has grown from strength to strength. The likes of P.V. Sindhu, Srikanth Kidambi and Saina Nehwal have already initiated their campaign for the 23rd to 28th October event and things look bright for Team India.
India has always been a nation who has been consistent in producing promising stars for badminton. The 2017 edition of the French Open proved to be a particularly successful outing for Indians as 25-year-old Srikanth Kidambi became the fifth person to lift the French Open trophy from this country, after a fourteen-edition drought.
The French Open has proved to be particularly difficult for the Indians to master. Through repeated tries, the title has slipped the hands of the Indians and continued to be elusive.
This Super 750 event, hosted by the Federation Francaise de badminton (FFBaD), has been attracting budding players from all over the world ever since it got promoted to being a major event in the badminton calendar. The end-October event serves as the perfect platform for young and promising players to make a place for themselves in the circuit.
Indians have been greeted with success on a few occasions. With the most number of wins stemming from men's singles, women's singles and men's doubles, it has been a dry spell in the women's doubles and mixed doubles sections of the tournament so far.
Here's having a look at the past Indian winners of the tournament category-wise:
Men's Singles
India has tasted the most number of victories at the French Open in the category of Men's Singles. The first Indian to make a conquest in the French territories was Kerala-born Vimal Kumar, when he won the title for two consecutive years in 1983-84. Other than being an Olympian himself, Vimal Kumar has served as the Chief National Coach of India.
Kumar has also moulded the likes of Saina Nehwal and Parupalli Kashyap, having trained them for several years. He dons the directorial hat at the Prakash Padukone Academy in Bangalore now and is quite a renowned name in Indian badminton.
It was again in 2000 that Siddharth Jain shot into fame when he won the coveted French Open title. Without any surprise this time, 2001 saw another Indian taking the title and defending the country's name on the French shores. This time it was the Allahabad-born Olympian Abhinn Shyam Gupta who scripted history by winning the title in 2001.
What followed was a long drought of titles for the nation which met its end with Srikanth Kidambi's win last year over Japan's Kenta Nishimoto in straight games to gift India its fifth title in Men's Singles category.