Well into her 30^th year, Ratchanok Intanon had one of her best seasons of recent times. The Thai qualified for her first HSBC BWF World Tour Finals since 2022 on the back of an impressive season that saw her win the Indonesia Masters and the Kumamoto Masters Japan, besides four semifinal finishes.

Now, with her first SEA Games individual gold medal last week, the run-up to Hangzhou 2025 could not have been more auspicious. Somewhat counter-intuitively, however, Intanon said her confidence wasn’t at its highest.

“I’m not really confident. I feel I’m still trying to find my balance, because sometime when I really need it, I cannot control anything, and the mentality too. But finally, I can win over myself first. That’s why I can beat my opponent.”

With a new generation asserting itself, and steady players dominating women’s singles, Intanon acknowledges a change in training approach – spending less time on skill and devoting more time to keeping up physically.

“I try to work on my physical side because I believe that it’s very important for my age. The mental side is dependent on how confident you feel with your fitness. If you feel it’s good, you can perform very well.

“So this is very important for me, and now I focus on fitness more than my badminton skill, because I think my skill is natural from when I was young. When you believe, you can do anything you want.

“I feel if I want to play, I have to be stronger than before, and I have to believe that I still can play like what I want, because now the game style has clearly changed from the past when I was young. I’m getting older, and I have to spend a lot of energy and now the players are more defensive. You have to be patient on every shot and you cannot kill even if you want to. So I focus more on fitness because for 20 years I’ve played with skill.”

The last few weeks have been physically draining – after winning the Kumamoto Masters Intanon headed to the Australia Open, and then to the SEA Games.

“I was very tired after the Kumamoto Masters – I went directly to Australia and then I had to go to SEA Games. It was very tiring for me at this age. It’s a challenge for sure, with my fitness, because I think I lost energy. You have to be like 100 per cent but I’m not really 100 per cent but with all my fighting, I think I try to fight for sure. And I try to do all everything, try to recover as much as I can and enjoy the last tournament for this year.”

Catch Ratchanok Intanon in action on Day 1 of the HSBC BWF World Tour Finals 2025