Kolkata: Ace Indian shuttler Saina Nehwal has decided to resume her training under national coach Pullela Gopichand after a period of three years where she worked with former coach Vimal Kumar. She took to Twitter to confirm the news in a series of tweets.
“For a while I’ve been thinking about moving my training base back to the Gopichand academy and I had a discussion about this with Gopi sir,” she tweeted.
The 27-year old recently put up a spirited performance in the World Championships where she was finally defeated by eventual winner Nozomi Okuhara. Nonetheless, she clinched the bronze medal and along with compatriot PV Sindhu’s silver, India for the very first time in the history of the tournament won two medals at the marquee badminton competition.
She further tweeted, “and I am really thankful to him for agreeing to help me again . At this stage in my career I think he can help me achieve my goals .”
But she didn’t forget to credit Vimal Kumar under whose guidance, she had not only climbed up the rankings to reach to the no.1 spot in the world badminton rankings but also won accolades like two world championship medals and a silver at the All England Super Series Premier in 2015.
She tweeted, “I’m also very thankful to Vimal sir for helping me for the last three years. He helped reach world no.1 in the rankings ..”
“And also helped me win two world championships medal silver in 2015 and bronze in 2017 along with many super series titles ..,” she further wrote.
The London Olympics Bronze medalist was likely to join Gopichand’s academy after the two had met and had conversations in Glasgow, the scheduled venue for the recently concluded World Badminton Championships. Saina began training at his academy recently and she also tweeted the same, “I m very happy to b back home and train in Hyderabad keep supporting friends.”
Saina had originally been a part of Gopichand’s academy at the initial stages of her career as she had became the first Indian shuttler to clinch a medal at the Olympics when she won the bronze in London in the year 2012.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time where the star shuttler is reuniting with coach Gopichand. She had preferred Bhaskar Babu over him after she had won the gold medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games held in Delhi.
But she changed her mind and had began training under Gopichand once again.