A year without silverware, but not without substance.
Chirag Shetty opens up on injuries, grief, mental resets and why finishing 2025 in the world’s top three still feels like progress – with Asian Games 2026, a home World Championships and the ultimate dream of LA 2028 firmly in focus.
Boria: How do you look back at 2025?
Chirag: To sum it up it wasn’t an ideal year. With us not winning a title, Satwik’s (Satwiksairaj Rankireddy ) father passing away tragically, me getting injured, having to stay away from the game for 2-3 months, not knowing when will the comeback happen, I am not entirely happy but quite happy with the way we have pushed back and ending the year being in the top 3.
Boria: What is winning titles all about? Is it about mentality, physicality or what is it about?
Chirag: I think it’s just around the corner. Its not like we haven’t won titles in the past, it’s a mental block that is stopping us. We have performed at bigger stages. I guess we just didn’t play as many semi-finals which could have turned into titles. So far 2023 has been a great year for us where we won 5 titles and converted almost all semis into finals and further to wins. We have been very consistent and it’s just a matter of time that we play semi-finals again and convert them into wins.
Boria: Your experience with coach Tan Kim Her?
Chirag: Its good, it felt like the missing piece of the block as we didn’t have to start from zero. We already knew how he is as a coach just that the dynamics has changed from his directing us back then to now us having proper conversations and inputs from both sides. Now that we are not young like we were 6 years back, it’s lot more of discussion and conversation between two of us and Tan.
Boria: Are you happy with playing holistic and more rounded games where the aggression is back and defence also improving considerably?
Chirag: Yes, I think we have defended much better in this tournament (BWF World Tour Finals 2025) and we were playing against a very tough group so all the matches we played- anyone could have won, it was just matter of who serves and receives well and had luck on their side too. Overall, I feel we played good game. It wasn’t really all attack that we have always delved upon, we defended quite well in this tournament. Even in the first game we were down 7-3 and then something clicked and with one good serve the momentum changed in our favour and we were leading, so I think it’s just the matter of time. In doubles games one can turn the game even towards the end by being there and believing in the possibility. So I think with the type of game we are playing, we are definitely getting better each day.
Boria: How are you approaching the year 2026? Have you started planning?
Chirag: Multisport event is coming- The Asian Games 2026 and it’s as good as playing at the Olympics barring Denmark, Germany, England. Its like the big ticket event everybody would want to have it tick marked like Olympics, World Championships. We would like to make use of the opportunity and go as deep into the event as possible. Then World Championship at home, the World Tour finals and the All England Open Badminton Championships so the target would obviously be to win as many medals as possible so we will keep pushing ourselves. We will treat this as any other year and approach it the way we always do by trying to get as deep into the tournaments as possible.
Boria: With so many events coming up, have you selected which tournaments to be a part of? If yes then how do you do that given you need recovery time as well before big events.
Chirag: One cannot be at their peak performance all the time so the target is to be so good that even if you are not playing your 100%, you are still better than the rest. That’s what all athletes try for. Yes, the World Championships and the Asian games are close but 3 weeks I feel is a good enough time to prepare. We always try to play well at the major events and not play as many tournaments as possible. This year might have the year we played most number of tournaments despite not playing for 2-3 months. We couldn’t skip events due to our low ranking and we had to get our ranking high to have a better draw in the super series events. Once your are in the top 8 then, you don’t end up playing the top 8 best players in the world so you are at least avoiding them unless it’s the quarterfinals. So once we are able to do that we can always pick and choose which event to play. There is an event every other week so one cannot possibly play all so they pick to play whichever they feel they can peak at and give their 100%. That’s our game plan as well.
Boria: How challenging was it to deal with the physical adversities (injury) and the mentals impact of the loss (Paris Olympics 2024)? was it the worse period in your professional career?
Chirag: Yes it was definitely a tough phase. Satwik was going through a lot of back and shoulder issues pre and post Olympics. Mentally we were not at our best after Olympics either. But the thought of just getting back into the court and competing again made us realise how important the game is to us and how alive we feel on the court. We did everything to get back on the court fitter, stronger and now when we look back, we may not have won the title but have been very consistent with the tournaments. Beating Aaron Chia and Soh Wooi Yik at the World Championships was more so like a redemption, even if I do not call it that, it at least got our confidence back. Olympics was not a very happy memory so it was finally we could change that memory a bit.
Boria: Do you advocate any sort of mental drills to deal with a downer? Mental conditioning, meditation etcetera.
Chirag: I was working with a mental conditioning coach until the Olympics , post that I stopped because I felt with the knowledge I have , I was good by myself. It’s just the small things to keep in mind when you feel a bit jittery or nervous. There are other small things I use during match that calms me down if I am not feeling that well serving and receiving. Its been a year and a half that I have not worked with anybody. I was working with a psychologist who was based out of Denmark , my then coach Mathias Boe was working with him so I was too and it was good but post that I decided that I wanted to be by myself.
Boria: Olympics is like 800 days away but is LA in the visualization and is it still that one missing medal Satwik-Chirag is desperate to get in their medal cabinet?
Chirag: Most definitely. The moment we came back empty handed it was decided. We have a WhatsApp group with our manager and we changed it from Paris 2024 to LA 2028 the moment we lost or the day after, so it was like a mental switch. We started looking forward to the next leaving behind what was done. It is like winning celebrations that go one for a day and then we start focussing onto the next goal.
Boria: What’s plan for Christmas?
Chirag: My cousins are coming over for Christmas. We usually have a tournament (Malaysia Open) starting from the first week so haven’t been able to celebrate Christmas at home for a while now. Since we played two finals last week so took a break and I decided to stay at home and celebrate Christmas with family.
Boria: All the very best to you and Satwik.
Chirag: Thank you so much.
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