Gopichand Academy to set up Sports Science, R&D centres.

Pullela Gopichand Badminton Foundation is gearing to expand its facilities, while setting up a Sports Science Centre and a Research and Development (R&D) Centre.

The Foundation that played a major role in transforming the country’s badminton sport scene has teamed up with Kotak Mahindra Bank to develop a world-class training facility and create a platform to train coaches.

“As a part of this engagement with the Gopichand Academy, we will invest Rs. 30-35 crore in upgrading facilities at the academy. Apart from education, we are also looking at providing encouragement to sports,” Dipak Gupta, Joint Managing Director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, said.

“We are also looking at some other sports to engage with and wrestling is top among our priorities,” he added.

Pullela Goipichand, the legendary Indian badminton player, coach and founder trustee of Pullela Gopichand Badminton Foundation, said, “The objective of the Foundation is to train, nurture and guide young talent with the purpose of developing international badminton champions. We will work together towards our shared vision of developing outstanding athletes and coaches.”

Gopichand said the programme entails construction of a high-performance training centre with six air-conditioned badminton courts at Gachibowli in Hyderabad, a Sports Science Centre and the upcoming new training centre.

The sports science centre will get top quality resident nutritionists, physiotherapists and conditioning experts on board for the all-round development of players and to ensure that the badminton coaching imparted by the academy is at par with global standards.

“Unlike in some countries, where the progress of a sportsperson is mapped from his/her childhood, we do not have such facilities here. We hope to now create such a facility, where we can monitor their progress from an early stage,” he said.

“Over the last 3-4 years, the popularity of badminton has grown exponentially. The number of Indian players in the international scene will go up with better training facilities and quality coaches. We do not have training facilities for coaches and we plan to bridge that demand,” Gopichand said.

HBL