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- 'I wrote the engineering exam and failed and I continued in sports and this is where I stand now. I think you have to be focused and even lucky sometimes.'
Chief badminton coach Pullela Gopichand, who guided Saina Nehwal and P V Sindhu to Olympic medals in the successive Games, says he was lucky that he wasn't good in studies and it was a flunked IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) exam that paved his way to be a successful sportsperson.
"My brother and I both played sports. He was fantastic in sports and now I feel that I was lucky I wasn't good in studies," Gopichand said while discussing how sports requires commitment from both parents and sacrifices and sometimes luck also plays a part.
"He was a state champion. He wrote his IIT exam and passed. He went to IIT and stopped playing. I wrote the engineering exam and failed and I continued in sports and this is where I stand now. I think you have to be focused and even lucky sometimes," the 42-year-old said.
Gopichand went on to become only the second Indian to win the All England title in 2001 and soon after he retired and opened his own academy.
The journey to set up the academy was not an easy one as he faced many rejections when he went to ask for help from different quarters to arrange the finance.
Talking about one such incident, Gopichand said: "I remember having gone to a certain PSU (Public Sector United) few years back. I was made to wait for three continuous days outside the room when they promised me support for badminton but after waiting from 9 in the morning to 5:30 in the evening after three days a certain officer at a high position came up to me and said that badminton doesn't have the eyeballs to be a world sport."
"That was the last day I had gone ahead and asked anybody for sponsorship. The same night I went back home and thanks to my parents and wife, we mortgaged our house and that is how the academy came up," Gopichand said in a felicitation ceremony in New Delhi on Tuesday.
In the last 12 years since setting up his academy in Hyderabad, Gopichand produced two Olympic medallists and he said he never thought his dream to see India win an Olympic medal in badminton would come true so soon.
"I started the academy in 2004 with 25 young kids. Sindhu was one of my youngest kid at about eight years and P Kashyap was the oldest at 15. When I started coaching I had this dream that India would win an Olympic medal someday. I didn't know that we could so soon in 2012 win our first medal," he said.
"I think maybe I should retire now because my goals are all finished and done with," he said on a lighter note.
Gopichand said though he was treated badly by some people he always had well wishers who always supported him.
"We have people in the ministry who have been ridiculous in their way of treating us but we also have some great souls who have supported us," he said.
"I hadn't applied for the Rashtriya Khel Protsahana Puraskar and the Padma Bhushan but few supportive officials felt that I should still be given the award. So its those kind of officials and people who move the sport forward. God has been very kind in my lifetime, whenever I have had problems He has sent somebody for help," he said.
Meanwhile, Sindhu's father PV Ramana said that people who earlier used to criticise them for letting their daughter take sports as a career are the ones to appreciate her achievements and their sacrifices now.
"When Sindhu used to leave for training sometimes at 4'o (a.m.) clock and sometimes at 5'o clock and afterwards when we used to go for walks so many people used to say that why are you bearing so much but the same people now say that we are so proud of your daughter", Ramana said,
"Unless and until we don't sacrifice or put in some hard work we don't get the fruit which Sindhu has done and she has got the fruits of it," he added.
On being asked about his sacrifices, Ramana said: "As parents its our duty and moreover we being sports persons we know what is the importance of sports in the lives of sportsmen and how hard one has to work to come up to this level so we gave in our best to help our daughter achieve all that she deserves.
"Parents instead of pressurising their kids should come forward to support them in whichever field they want and then surely the child will also try to repay it back through the hard work and my daughter has done that to me," he concluded.