Viktor Axelsen, probably the most embellished Olympic singles badminton participant with two golds and one bronze, is retiring at age 32 attributable to again ache that saved him from pursuing an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic title on the LA28 Games.
Denmark’s Axelsen cited nerve ache — and again issues relationship again to earlier than he repeated as Olympic gold medalist in Paris, adopted by surgical procedure in April 2025 — that lately saved him from “even simple training on court.”
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“My medical team has advised me that getting back with how my back is looking, it’s not looking good, because the next step would be to go in for a bigger surgery and fixate the lower back because my back is basically not stable enough that I would be able to compete at the highest level, so basically it’s not because I want to retire,” he said on The Average Not Average podcast. “It’s simply because I’m not able to do the training required, but it is very tough for me not to be able to say stop or have one last dance, but that’s just how my story is, I guess.”
Axelsen and China’s Lin Dan and Zhang Ning are the one gamers to win a number of Olympic singles titles since badminton grew to become an Olympic medal sport in 1992.
Axelsen beat Lin within the bronze-medal match in 2016, after which the Dane went viral in China for giving an interview in Mandarin to Chinese TV.
Axelsen then snapped China’s streak at three Olympic males’s singles golds by profitable in Tokyo after which Paris. He was the one badminton participant from a rustic exterior of Asia to win a medal at both Games.
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Axelsen grew to become the second athlete from Denmark to win a number of particular person Olympic golds after Paul Elvstrøm, who received crusing titles in 1948, 1952, 1956 and 1960.
Axelsen, a father of two daughters, additionally received world titles in 2017 and 2022.
“I feel extremely, to be honest, blessed and happy that I’ve been able to do what I love for so many years and won everything I wanted to win and, most importantly of all, meet so many extremely good people,” he stated.
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