Susi Susanti

Susi Susanti was born in Tasikmalaya, West Java, and started playing badminton as a young child in a country where the sport was already a national obsession but had never before earned an Olympic medal. She rose through Indonesia's badminton academies and by her late teens was one of the best players in the world, winning the All England Championships, then the most prestigious title outside the Olympics, four times through the early 1990s.

Badminton was added to the Olympic programme for the first time at the 1992 Barcelona Games, and Susanti went in as the clear favourite for the women's singles title. She won it, beating South Korea's Bang Soo-hyun in the final, becoming the first Indonesian in history to win an Olympic gold medal in any sport. Two hours later her fiance, Alan Budi Kusuma, won the men's singles title as well. When the couple returned home, they were driven through Jakarta in a parade led by a car carrying a giant shuttlecock, and the government awarded Susanti a house and land in gratitude.

She added a bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Games and helped Indonesia win the Uber Cup team title twice before retiring from international competition. Her win is still regarded as one of the defining moments in Indonesian sport, credited with cementing badminton as the country's most popular game and inspiring generations of players who followed her.

She later ran a badminton equipment business and was honoured by the Indonesian government for her contribution to the nation's sporting history.