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Pan's labyrinth leads to London
aiming for the Games as a 16-year-old ...
by Richard Eaton
If you had to pick one new young player who would make it to
London 2012 it might be Panuga Riou, the 16-year-old from
Winchester who pronounced herself “a bit disappointed” not to
have upset the seedings in the quarter-finals of the women's
singles.
Quite right too, even though she was up against the height,
experience, and angular attacking of the second-seeded Jill
Pittard, who has contested the last three finals.
Riou has a fine all-round game, the patience to work for
openings, and good enough physique and technical skills to
improve at a steady rate. What she lacked on this occasion was a
steady nerve, which dragged her standard down just enough to
make defeat, by 21-16, 21-15, always probable.
Pittard has brains and tenacity and an amazing discipline to
adhere to a schedule which begins at 5.30 a.m., involves a full
day's work as a calibration engineer in Coventry, continues with
training at Loughborough or Birmingham, and ends at about 9.30
each evening, presumably with sleep which comes the instant her
head thwacks on to the pillow.
“She's good and expected to win, but I thought I might beat
her,” Riou said afterwards. “I can play better: my nerves got
the better of me.”
She wasn't helped by the drift, which too often swept the
shuttle wide, particularly when she tried to lift from the net
and get the shuttle deep into the corners.
“I tried to exude calm,” said her coach Nigel Tier, a
former England international who also manages the Westgate
badminton centre at Winchester. “Whether she got those nerves
from me, I don't know.
“I certainly get nervous watching – it's a big game and there's
a lot of pressure playing against an older player like this.
She's being looked at as a player who should be making a
breakthrough.”
There seems little doubt that this will happen, and that the
only question is how soon. Riou is convinced that she can make
to London 2012, though this will depend on keeping her ranking
moving steadily upwards.
At the moment she is doing that by combining tournaments on the
European circuit with studying at Peter Symonds College in
Winchester – where she will have one more year - and with work
with Badminton England's World Class Potential under 19 squad at
Milton Keynes.
“She has a lot of potential,” says Tier. “She has her eyes not
just on becoming England number one but going beyond that.
“She just needs experience of some of the bigger events, and to
work on her consistency, and on the tactical side a little more.
“She can play more shots on practice situations, but it's hard
to put them into a match at this level, and then she can get
into safe mode. But her true game will come out.”
If Riou does it will be testimony to a clever juggling act, for
she still hopes to go to university – possibly Loughborough or
Bath – and to her having overcome some unusual difficulties.
She was born in Thailand and did not come to the UK till she was
eight and a half. Starting to learn English at that stage was
hard, though most people would not detect now that it had been.
It means that even when she goes on holiday with her mother to
Bangkok she still sets aside time to do training. Because part
of her mind is almost always on the British capital, and what in
three and a half years' time she might achieve there.
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