Priority is health, we can talk sports later: Pullela Gopichand

New Delhi: Staying positive and fit is national badminton coach Pullela Gopichand advice to his students for pulling through the ongoing three-week lockdown in the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Indian badminton contingent would have been in the home stretch of its preparations for the Tokyo Olympics. Instead, the players and coaches are at their respective homes, with the Olympics itself more than a year away after its unprecedented postponement in March.

Gopichand on Monday joined the multitude of celebrities who made monetary contributions towards the fight against coronavirus in the country — he donated Rs 15 lakh to the PM-CARES Fund and Rs 5 lakh each to the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state governments. He knows that he is one of those in the country to not be too affected by the current crisis.

“I am just spending time with the family. Doing my bits of yoga and meditation and trying to maintain a fitness regime apart from interacting with the players. I’m using the time well and not complaining about the lockdown at all,” Gopichand told IANS.

“The people who are struggling are the daily wagers and agricultural farmers who don’t have a saved income in hand. There is definitely a lot of them who will be suffering and it is our responsibility to take care of them. For the rest of us who are from the middle-class, it’s okay. It’s just a few months out of your life and careers can come back once things get back to normal.”

The students of the Gopichand Badminton Academy may be confined to their homes but they are connected to the 46-year-old and his staff through the Zoom App. Pullela Gopichand said that fitness trainer Dinaz Vervatwala takes two sessions a day for the students on the app which the students follow and report back their results.

He tells his more high profile students, especially those that are chasing Olympic qualification, to see this period as a blessing and spend as much time as they can with their families.

“For most athletes who have been part of sport for a while, they realise that injuries are a part of it and every time they are injured, they’ve probably been out for a couple of months. So they could just treat this as a long injury break,” said Pullela Gopichand.

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) said on Tuesday that all tournaments till July have been suspended. Pullela Gopichand said that the fact that the Olympics has been postponed by a year means that for now, he doesn’t have to worry about the effect this break will have on qualification chances.

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