The Rio Olympics silver medal was one of the high points of the Danish World No. 3 women’s doubles pair of Kamilla Rytter Juhl and Christinna Pedersen.
It was then they thought they should announce their relationship to the world.
They went on to release a book Unikke Makkerskab, which translates to ‘The Unique Partnership’, in October this year.
Speaking to the Indian media at the Premier Badminton League promotional event here on Monday, Kamilla said they thought the time was ripe to reveal it all after Rio.
“We also wanted to show that we wanted to be known for our badminton and not for being a female couple,” said Kamilla.
On the season gone by: Christinna: It’s been a good season for us. It is never easy to win a Super Series, we won in Singapore and the European championship, followed by a bronze in the Worlds and reached All-England Open final.
On the Japanese and Korean challenge: There are four Japanese pairs in the top 10. Competition is intense. Korea is also tough. It is very difficult to get an easy draw these days. We are just happy to be competing at the highest level.
Reason for success: I think Kamilla’s hard smashes from the baseline and my net play. We have got better ever since we started in 2010. In the last 3-4 years, we have shown that our semifinals/final appearances won’t be rare.
People’s reaction to their relationship: We have heard only positives and that, of course, is nice for us. The European and Danish players knew about it, so for them it was old news.
It is nice that now we don’t have to hide anything. Or, if people ask how well we know each other, I can say we know each other very well because we live together. And that, of course, is nice.
Kamilla: It was very easy while in Denmark, because such relationships are quite common. We were a bit nervous on how the rest of the world would react.
But, like I said before, we got a lot of positive messages from around the world, including India, Malaysia and Indonesia. Out of 100 messages one or two are negative and we are at an age where we are more mature and more calm.
(The writer is in Dubai at the invitation of Spotzlive)