All England win, foundation of my coaching path: Pullela Gopichand

The story of the All England is very important, as it has definitely been a life-changing one for me. The victory gave me recognition, but crucially, it was the foundation on which I could become the coach I am and help build an ecosystem for badminton in the country.

In fact, the preparations that helped me win the All England were actually towards the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

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I lived like a monk. I was training at Sports Authority of India and Ganguly Prasad was my coach there. I just spent hours meditating, manifesting, thinking that I’m going to win the Olympic medal . Even if you were to give me another chance today, with all the knowledge, I don’t think I could have prepared or worked harder than I did on that day. Unfortunately, I lost early in Olympics, because after three knee surgeries — in 1994, ’96 and ’97 — my body was not the same. It couldn’t handle the long, strenuous effort of playing on concrete flooring in Sydney. After a three-setter against Vladislav Druzchenko, my body didn’t have the energy. My entire body was swollen and my knee had a golf ball kind of swelling. Things were very sad after the Olympic failure. I was like a zombie, didn’t know what to do, but somehow pulled myself to work but without expectation. With that kind of a mindset, I went into the All England of 2001. We started on a Saturday from Bangalore, but halfway through our auto journey to the airport, we heard that our visa has not been still done and that we had to come back on Monday.



We took a very roundabout trip to collect the visa in Delhi.

Then we had a long journey from Delhi to Bandar Abbas in Iran, Frankfurt and Birmingham — we started on a Monday morning and reached on Tuesday evening. Those days, All England had a 64-player draw (now 32) and we still were playing on concrete. We had two matches on Day One, a Wednesday, two matches on Day Two. Although, I won inside two games each, I had to go through a lot of strain. Fifteen points was a tiring format, and the concrete floor wasn’t helping my cause. We didn’t have physios or nutrition specialists. My food was roti, daal paalak and chicken at the same restaurant the whole week. After matches, I would lie on ice once in the physio room at the stadium and then in my room.

The matches took a heavy toll on my body and with a lot of swelling, I still somehow managed to win. The biggest relief after the title was that I don’t have to go through pain for another day. To recover from and to plan the match, I think it’s purely God’s grace. I was lucky that I had Dr Ashok Rajagopal and solid support from my team comprising Ganguly Prasad and Le Roy D’Sa sir.

(As told to Manne Ratnakar)

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