Hyderabad/Nagpur: We don’t know about Sindhu and her chances of winning a Gold medal in the next Olympics in badminton, but as far as stupid comments by politicians go, this one deserves the best medal no doubt.
Sindhu and her coach/ mentor Gopichand returned back from Rio to a deserved hero’s welcome at Hyderabad. They were almost mobbed at the airport and then taken in an open bus all across the twin cities of Hyderabad-Secunderabad. Then a glittering felicitation function was planned at Gachibowli stadium, close to Gopichand’s badminton academy where not only Sindhu, but before her even Saina had trained.
On the sidelines of the function, Dy. C.M. Mahmood Ali really put his foot in his mouth by making the following statement that had listeners open mouthed in astonishment.
“We are planning to give PV Sindhu proper coaching so that she can get gold medal next time” Mahmood Ali said quite forgetting that Gopichand is a former All England Champion and national coach. He also runs a badminton academy to nurture and develop players of tomorrow. If that was not enough, the politician went on to dig himself deeper by continuing-
“The coach that she has right now (Gopichand) is also good but beyond that, we wish for her to get a gold from the next tournament,” he added. (So now we know why Sindhu got only silver this time!)
Incidentally, this Dy C.M.’s Telangana government has announced a cash reward of Rs 1 crore for Gopichand who also stood by Saina Nehwal’s side when she had won the bronze at the London Olympics.
Not only this government, Gopichand was gifted five acres land during the previous Chandrababu Naidu government of undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2003 that has now helped build shuttlers like PV Sindhu and Kidambi Srikanth – who had reached the quarters of the men’s singles event at the Rio Olympics before bowing out to Lin Dan.
No doubt Ali will organize a special coach for him also to win a medal next time?
