Ashwini Ponnappa

Ashwini Ponnappa was born on 18 September 1989 in Bangalore. She was educated at St. Francis Xavier Girls High School, Bangalore and at St. Mary's College, Hyderabad. Her father played hockey for India.[1] However Ashwini preferred badminton over hockey and started training in badminton.

In 2001, Ashwini Ponnappa won her first national title in 2004 in the sub-junior girls' doubles category. She also won the national title in sub-junior girls' doubles in 2005, and the Junior girls' doubles National title in 2006 and 2007. She won the gold medal in mixed doubles and the team events at the South Asian Games held in 2010. In the 2010 Commonwealth Games, she won the gold medal in Women's Doubles event pairing with Jwala Gutta, making history by winning the first gold medal for India in the event. Gutta and Ponnappa became household names after winning the medal in front of home crowd.[2]

Later on in 2011 they came up with one of their finest performances when she and Gutta etched their names in history books becoming the first Indian pair to ensure a medal at the World Badminton Championships. The pair defeated 12th seeds Vita Marrisa and Nadya Melati of Indonesia 17-21, 21-10, 21-17 to storm into the women's doubles semifinal before losing out to Chinese fifth seeds in the semis in London, thereby winning a bronze in the Badminton World Championship.

She participated in the women's doubles at the 2012 London Olympics. Ponnappa and Gutta lost their opening women's doubles match against the Japanese duo of Mizuki Fujii and Reika Kakiiwa. They then went on to beat much higher ranked Wen Hsing Cheng and Yu Chin Chien of Chinese Taipei 25-23, 16-21, 21-18 to register their first win in the group stages. Jwala and Ashwini missed out on a quarterfinal berth by a difference of just one point, even though they beat Shinta Mulia Sari and Lei Yao of Singapore 21-16 21-15 in their last group B match, after tying with Japan and Taipei on the number of wins. Prior to India's final group game on Tuesday night, the World number five Japanese pair of Mizuki Fujii and Reika Kakiiwa had shockingly lost to Chinese Taipei's Cheng Wen Hsing and Chien Yu Chin, ranked 10th, 19-21 11-21. India lodged a formal protest with the Games organizers to probe if the women's doubles badminton match involving Japan and Chinese Taipei was played in the right spirit, following the elimination of medal hopes Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa but no action was taken. Following the Olympic Games Jwala went to a temporary sabbatical from the game. Ponnappa then partnered Pradnya Gadre for a brief period of time in 2013 and then re-united with Jwala later in the year. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Ponnappa and Gutta won the silver medal in the women's doubles, losing to a Malaysian pair in the final.[3] On June 29, 2015, playing with Jwala, they won the Canada Open women's doubles title by defeating the top-seeded Dutch pair of Eefje Muskens and Selena Piek.[4] She competed with Gutta at the 2016 Olympics, but they lost all three of their group stage matches and therefore did not progress further.[5] At the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Ponnappa was part of the Indian team which won gold in the mixed team event, and won bronze with N. Sikki Reddy in the women's doubles.[1]

On 24 December 2017, she married businessman and model Karan Medappa.[6][7] Her favourite author is Nicholas Sparks and her favourite movie is the 2013 romantic-comedy Begin Again. Her favourite badminton strike is the smash.[8]

Women's doubles results with Jwala Gutta against Super Series finalists, World Championships semifinalists, and Olympic quarterfinalists.[11]

• Ashwini Ponnappa on Twitter
• Ashwini Ponnappa on Facebook
• Ashwini Ponnappa at BWF.tournamentsoftware.com
• Ashwini Ponnappa at Olympics at Sports-Reference.com (archived)
• Ashwini Ponnappa at gc2018.com