It is anti-climactic that just days after her decade-long career’s biggest moment, He Bing Jiao would announce her retirement.

She is, after all, just 27. After long being in the shadow of her peers – particularly Chen Yu Fei – He Bing Jiao finally had her moment in the sun in Paris when she made the women’s singles final against An Se Young. That she chose this high point to call time on her career seems almost counter-intuitive.

Her two big wins at Paris 2024 were against Pusarla V Sindhu – she avenged her bronze medal playoff loss to the Indian at Tokyo 2020 – and defending champion Chen Yu Fei in the quarterfinals. Although she was lucky to be in the final, with Carolina Marin suffering an injury while on the verge of victory in their semifinal, He Bing Jiao certainly did not come away feeling triumphant. She looked crestfallen. The same thing had happened in Tokyo 2020 too, against Beiwen Zhang in the Round of 16, and when reminded of that, the Chinese left-hander burst into tears.

This sensitivity, her soft-spoken nature, and her intellectual curiosity are perhaps her most striking qualities off-court. On court, her game is untypical of a top Chinese player, based not so much on power or steadiness, but on delightful left-handed skill and footwork.

And while the limitations of her game did allow her top opponents – such as Tai Tzu Ying, Carolina Marin, Akane Yamaguchi – to have a substantial career advantage over her, there were times when she was able to stitch it all together. She was frequently in semifinals and finals all through her career; in 2022, her best season, she won the German Open, the Korea Masters, made consecutive semifinals at the Indonesia Masters and Indonesia Open, and then struck a purple patch in Europe, winning the Denmark Open and the French Open on successive weeks.

She can, of course, look back with pride at her decade-long career. Making her mark first at the BWF World Junior Championships 2014, when she finished runner-up to Akane Yamaguchi – she avenged that loss at home in the Youth Olympic Games later that year – and on to her senior career, helping her team win Sudirman Cup and Uber Cup titles, besides significant individual titles like the Japan Open 2016, French Open 2016 and Korea Open 2019 and bronze medals at two World Championships, He Bing Jiao was a fixture in the top 10.

Just as importantly, she was a great ambassador of the game on and off-court: never questioning umpiring decisions or indulging in gamesmanship or banter. Always polite and courteous, she will be missed.