New Delhi, March 21 -- Anupama Upadhyaya was born with the silver spoon of sports genes. Her father is a former cricketer who always wanted his children to pursue a sport. Anupama started swimming. She enjoyed it and hoped that she would make a career out of it. But a coach told her that she neither had the height nor the built to be a professional swimmer. When she switched to badminton at the age of 9, yet another man told her she was "too thin" to play the racket sport. But here was a girl who wasn't going to let naysayers decide the course of her life. For Anupama, these instances served as motivation to prove that "I can do it!"

The young and rising 19-year-old shuttler is a former Badminton World Federation (BWF) World Junior Numbe...