#3 Pusarla Venkata Sindhu
Popularly known as PV Sindhu, the girl from Hyderabad made a cricket crazy nation stay glued to their television sets to watch a badminton match. She stunned the world after she defeated the World No.2 Wang Yihan of China in straight sets in her quarter final match at Rio. With her never giving up attitude, she carried the hopes of a billion Indian fans on her shoulders alone and proved what she is capable of doing after she became the first ever Indian woman to win a silver medal at the Olympics.
While her height adds more power to her smashes, her movement on court is amazingly swift as well. Although she lost to the World No.1 Carolina Marin in the gold medal match at Rio, she fought till the end of the match and managed to give the Spaniard a tough fight.
She became the first Indian to win a medal in women’s singles at the Badminton World Championships in 2013. After becoming the youngest recipient of the Padma Shri in March 2015, she was honoured with India’s highest sporting honour ‘The Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna’ on 29th August 2016. She surely deserves all the accolades and applauds. Kudos girl!
#4 Elaine Thompson
The world is obsessed with Usain Bolt, but now he is not the only Jamaican who is killing it on the track. We have our new ‘Sprint Queen’ who also hails from Jamaica and now is the fastest woman in the world. Elaine won gold medals in both the 100m and 200m women’s finals at the Rio Olympics.
Jamaica’s golden girl is the first woman to win both the 100m and 200m gold at the Olympics after Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988 Seoul Games. Like Elaine said, in one of her interviews, that her school motto was ‘let the light shine’, she had surely shone as one of the brightest stars on the tracks of Rio. The fastest woman in the world has surely set the tracks on fire
