An Se-young

An Se-young was born on 5 February 2002 in Gwangju, South Korea, and grew into the country’s leading women’s singles player of her generation. She was marked early as a junior prospect and moved onto the senior BWF circuit while still a teenager.

Her game is built on retrieval, pace, and stamina that wears opponents down over long rallies. By her early twenties she had already collected a World Championships title (2023) and Asian Games gold (2022), then closed the loop with Olympic gold in Paris in 2024 — Korea’s first women’s singles Olympic title since Bang Soo-hyun in 1996.

She has also anchored Korea’s Uber Cup teams and spent long stretches as world No. 1. Sponsors and Korean audiences treat her title defenses as national events; for global badminton, she is the player others are measured against until someone clearly knocks her off that perch.

The interesting part is how ordinary her excellence has started to feel. Rivals still talk about her as if the next great challenger is due any month; the results say the gap may last a full Olympic cycle. Watch whether anyone can take a Super 1000 final off her when she is healthy — that is the real scoreboard now.