And so it had to come – the season when some renowned names stepped off stage.
Every Olympics is followed by a spate of retirements. This is not just because the Olympics is the pinnacle of sport, which leaves in its wake – depending on context – relief, exhaustion, unparalleled joy, or deep despair. The Olympics is the mountaintop; there can be no further peaks to aim for or conquer.
Paris 2024 offered an extended timeline for some of those who had originally planned to retire after 2020. But with the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to 2021, some of those plans got deferred, for there was just three years left for the next Olympics.
Among those who retired in 2024, perhaps the most poignant was Kento Momota’s. Unlucky to miss his first Olympics (Rio 2016) due to a ban and then suffering an accident in early 2020 that saw him unable to mount much of a challenge at his home Olympics, Momota soldiered on. Eventually, it was apparent that the Japanese could never regain the form of his prime and decided to retire at the Thomas Cup in May 2024, signalling the end for one of the most gifted players of the post-Lin Dan/Lee Chong Wei era.
Marcus Fernaldi Gideon (right) and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo
Despite his ill-luck and truncated career, Momota can still relish the two World Championships gold medals he won, at the prime of his powers in 2018 and 2019. That honour eluded the men’s doubles greats of that period, Marcus Fernaldi Gideon and Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo. Gideon and Sukamuljo were among the high-profile names to exit the stage in 2024. The ‘Minions’ lit up the court with their unique style and abilities, and perhaps left fans with the feeling that they had left before achieving all that they were truly capable of.
Zheng Si Wei
On the other hand, there was one player who left nothing in reserve, and left the circuit with all his dreams achieved – Zheng Si Wei. In Tokyo 2020 he and Huang Ya Qiong had fallen at the penultimate step, in the Olympic final. Over the next three years Zheng and Huang charted their course to the Olympic summit, and this time they could not be denied.
Having achieved their biggest dream, Zheng chose to call time at the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals 2024 – his farewell happening in a blaze of glory with a title at his last tournament, and that too on home soil. It couldn’t have panned out better.
Lee Yang
Another Olympic champ, who signed off after authoring one of the most remarkable title defences in history, was Lee Yang. While Lee had his limited success on the Tour, his legacy will be centred around the two Olympic campaigns where he and Wang made history – first by becoming Chinese Taipei’s first gold medallists, and then by defending that title – the first men’s doubles pair to do so.
Wakana Nagahara
Japan had prominent retirements apart from Momota; among them was two-time world champion Wakana Nagahara, part of Japan’s golden generation which briefly wrested domination of women’s doubles from China, bringing some of the country’s greatest successes.
Her singles colleague Aya Ohori too walked into the sunset; the left-hander, part of Japan’s strong women’s team of the last decade, enjoyed her biggest moments rather late in her career, and eventually chose the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals 2024 to sign off.
Kanta Tsuneyama
There were other prominent Japanese retirements – including Kanta Tsuneyama, Akira Koga and Taichi Saito. Tsuneyama, one of the three ‘Ks’ of Japanese men’s singles with Kento Momota and Kenta Nishimoto, was a key member of the squad that won Thomas Cup silver in 2018 and bronze in the next two editions. His biggest moment on the Tour came at the 2021 French Open, which he won beating Momota in the semifinals and Chou Tien Chen in the final.
He Bing Jiao
Apart from Zheng Si Wei, four prominent Chinese players retired. He Bing Jiao, part of the women’s singles top 10 for over eight years, earned the praise of sports fans worldwide at Paris 2014 for carrying the national pin of her injured semifinal opponent, Carolina Marin, on the podium. He Bing Jiao’s act highlighted her gracious and sporting nature that she had displayed throughout her career.
Former world champion and Olympic silver medallist Liu Yu Chen, his doubles partner Ou Xuan Yi, and Tan Qiang were among Zheng’s colleagues to bid goodbye.
Jongkolphan Kititharakul and Rawinda Prajongjai
While most of the top players to retire were Chinese and Japanese, Thailand saw their accomplished women’s doubles duo of Jongkolphan Kititharakul/Rawinda Prajongjai calling it a day. Part of the generation that brought laurels to Thai women’s badminton, Kititharakul and Prajongjai will leave with a sense of accomplishment, with the Uber Cup silver in 2018 being the standout moment.
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