Where the Saina, Sindhu legends were born

Winning an Olympic medal is the new normal for cadets from former world champion Gopichand's badminton academy

With first Saina Nehwal and now P V Sindhu returning with a medal each in consecutive Olympics, the Gopichand Badminton Academy has established itself for a high consistency in the public mind.

"A lot has changed here from five to six years before, in terms of training and preparing a player for international competitions. Many newer elements were added, with a focus on stroke practices, improving the fitness levels and making players psychologically strong. And, a strict nutrition and dietary regimen," a senior member of the academy told Business Standard.

Apart from daily practice, the players undergo agility training, super-circuit training (a form of body conditioning, to build strength and muscular endurance), a gym and fitness regimen, to match the strength and ability of international players. The academy has a strong contingent of 18 coaches, including those for fitness.

Pullela Gopichand is a former winner at the world's oldest and prestigious All England Open Badminton tournament. He brings the other, finer elements to the table, like analysing the work of rival players and that of his own wards, to customise the training for each individual. Gopichand had built this private training facility in 2008, with his own savings and a Rs 5-crore donation by Matrix Laboratories founder Nimmagadda Prasad.

The big change in Sindhu's performance at the Rio Olympics, from the days of her first Grand Prix medal victory in 2013, comes with the academy's growing ability in preparing players to accomplish at the highest level, say observers. Sindhu was actually being prepared to fight for a gold at the 2020 Olympics; her Rio performance exceeded the academy's expectations.

  With a little over 100 national and global medals in badminton to its credit, the Gopichand Academy sets an example on the various aspects useful to those aspiring to produce Olympic medallists in other fields. As the medal tally shows, the academy has developed a strong pipeline of athletes who have already proved their mettle at various competitions and are ready to go to the next level.

What is interesting is the tapping of a large catchment. The 40 players who stay on the Gachibowli campus come from diverse places - Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam, Bengal, Maharashtra, Kerala. Parents of the other 75 boys and girls are being trained in the city. The academy also runs small branches at Gwalior, Vadodara, Salem and Tanuku (in Andhra), where it trains young aspirants to a certain level.

The academy has already identified and is preparing four boys and four girls for the 2018 Commonwealth and Asian Games - Srinath, Pranoy, Kashyap, Gurusaidutt, Ritvika Shivani, P C Tulasi, Rituparna Das and Gayatri Gopichand. Among these, Kashyap reached the quarter finals in the 2012 London Olympics.

Registered as a charitable society, the Academy follows a financing model that helps keep the training charges affordable to many. It charges Rs 15,000 a month for players who stay on the campus and Rs 3,000 for others, irrespective of their level of training. "It costs us at least Rs 25,000 a month on each student who stays in the campus. We have been able to subsidise their costs with donations," said one of the managers. The training begins at four in the morning every day and nobody gets a single extra holiday, except on Sundays.