The Rio Olympics silver medal was one of the high points of the Danish women’s doubles pair of Kamilla Rytter Juhl and Christinna Pedersen, currently ranked No. three in the world. It was the time they thought that they should announce their relationship to the world.
They went on to release a book titled '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 right to reveal it all after Rio. “We also wanted to show that we wanted to be famous because of our badminton and we didn’t want to be know as only because of being a female couple. Now we have an Olympic medal so that was important to make clear we wanted to be famous for what we did on court and not for what we did outside court,” said the 34 year-old.
Question: Tell us about the season gone by?
Christinna: It’s been a good season for us. It is never easy to win a super series, we won it in Singapore, we won the European championship, followed by a bronze in worlds, reached the final of the All-England Open. We are happy.
How do you see the competition in doubles as the challenge from Japan and Korea is quite strong?
Christinna: There are four Japanese pairs in the top 10. Competition is intense. Korea is also tough. It is difficult to get an easy draw when you go for tournaments. We are just enjoying that we are able to compete with them at a high level.
READ: Love-all to love you — the Danish racquet romance
What do you attribute your success to?
Christinna: I think Kamilla’s hard smashes from the baseline and my net play make it effective. Since we started in 2010, we have got better. In the last 3-4 years, we have shown that it is not once in a while that we can reach the semifinals/final.
On how people reacted to their relationship
Christinna: We are very happy about people reacted to the news and we have only heard positives and that of course is nice for us. All the European players and Danish players knew about it so for them it was old news. It is nice for us that now everyone know and we don’t have to hide anything or if people ask us how well do you know each other off court I can say we know each other very well because we live together and that of course is nice.
Kamilla: For us it was very easy to live in Denmark because it is so common to live in a relationships like these. We were a little bit nervous on how the world would react to this news but again as I said before we got a lot of positive messages from around the world, including India, Malaysia, Indonesia people are still supporting us. Out of 100 messages one or two are negative and we are at an age where we are more mature and calm.
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