Former all-England winner and a champion coach, who changed the face of Indian badminton with Prakash Padukone, Hyderabad-based P. Gopi Chand said that his pet project “Badminton Gurukul” will aim to go beyond producing champions.
At the official launch of the specially conceptualised national coaching programme, Gopi explained that the primary objective is to provide access to the game and top-class coaching to the youngsters across the country.
For fun and fitness
“I agree with Anil Pradhan (Aparna Popat’s coach) that coaching is not necessarily to produce champions, but also playing for the sake of fun and fitness.”
The Gurukul programme is now being run in 14 cities with 28 training centres and 20 former internationals are involved in training around 1000 players. The programme will adhere to a coaching curriculum.
“We will have a coaching development programme and the former players will interact with each other and share their experiences,” said Gopi, the chief architect of the nation-wide programme.
This has been supported by the Tata Group, TVS Logistics, Sonjoy Chatterjee of Goldman Sachs India, lawyer Prem Rajani, and Supriya Devgun, founder and MD, Badminton Gurukul.
