Miranda Wilson has three great passions – badminton, violin and the environment.

It was a tough call between becoming a professional violinist and badminton for the German, who hails from a family of musicians. Badminton won out, but the violin remains a passion, and she occasionally plays for orchestras at concerts. As for the environment, Wilson’s pioneering efforts in sustainability (along with teammate Kai Schaeffer) have begun to make an impact in the badminton world.

Her principal identity now is as a badminton player, the second highest German women’s singles player, ranked No.113. Next week will be a landmark in her badminton career as she will enter her maiden BWF World Championships, with her family in attendance.

“I’m really happy that I qualified and I got selected by our national association, and it’s just huge to play my first World Championships, and it’s in a country that’s basically next door,” says Wilson.

“It’s in the Olympic stadium of last year. So there are a lot of feelings coming together for this tournament. We’ve been working hard the past weeks to be able to perform well, and I’m excited. I didn’t represent Germany at the Olympics, but it’s a major goal to qualify for LA 2028. Just knowing that the Olympics were there last year (at Adidas Arena) is also motivating in a way.”

This year has seen progress on the badminton front as she won the Malta International in April and the Bonn International in May.

“It’s been a major goal to building consistency, being healthy since I had a long injury phase in 2021 that kicked me out for over one and a half years. So I’m really pleased that I’ve gradually been able to go up the world ranking. Winning the Malta International and the Bonn International this year – I think I’m heading in a good direction, and I hope I can continue that.”

Quite memorably, her identities as a badminton player and violinist came together at the FISU World University Games in July, when she was invited to perform at the opening ceremony in front of 30,000 people.

“I grew up in a family of musicians, So music is always a part of my life, and even though I’m not pursuing it professionally, I do enjoy keeping it up, and that’s probably also a reason why my university is so slow, because there’s only so much time out of training to rest, recover, and then do a few other things. But I think it’s also that music can give a lot of energy.

“My entire junior years I was having lessons, doing competitions and a lot of badminton, a lot of music as well at the same time. But there just comes a point where you can’t do both at the same level anymore, and that’s where I just felt I wanted to go into sports.

“I wished to study music. But the thing is, if you go to music, it was a 100 per cent thing, you go either one way or the other. So I knew I couldn’t do both at once, even though I would have liked to. I’ve kept this habit of taking lessons once in a while and practising as far as I can find time. I sometimes have a few gigs with professional orchestras when they search for people to fill in. And I have those connections to that area, but I don’t have the time or energy to do it much.”

What similarities, if any, does she find between playing the violin and badminton?

“You approach things very similar. Also, badminton is a very rhythmic sport, so I feel that badminton players generally have a good feeling for rhythm, and need a good feeling, because we have so much, like speed changes on court. So there’s a lot of correlation between music and sport.”

Her third passion, environment, saw her co-found BadmintONEarth, which addresses questions around sustainability in badminton. BadmintONEarth has looked at reducing and recycling the waste generated in badminton (broken rackets, strings, shuttlecocks, tubes, etc), but more recently, its advocacy has been on policy.

“BadmintONEarth has made progress over the last year. We have managed to introduce sustainability as a concept in the German Badminton Association,” says Wilson. “The association has now started with its own funding projects. It is able to do certain projects targeting climate action, but also the 17 sustainable development goals that are like a global commitment of the United Nations. In 2024 BadmintONEarth applied for a change in the statutes of the German federation to imply that sustainability is a major part in every action of the association. So we are really trying to push forward in that way.

“Everything that we’ve achieved has always been a result of cooperating with other small federations and just using the power of acting together, and that has been really effective and also empowering over the past year.”

For the moment, though, the focus is on the World Championships. She has a difficult first round, against 11th seed Supanida Katethong.

“For now, we are just trying to keep up a very good level in training, trying to stay healthy, not do any stupid things, and also just in training to keep the health and not get any injuries. We’ve tried hard over the past weeks. This week is a little bit more easy, so we have a good recovery. I’m excited. I know that a lot of things can happen, so I’m just trying to stay open and keep my expectations more on what I can do, and then I’m confident that it’ll be a good tournament.”

→ Also read: A Quest for Sustainability