World Champion P.V. Sindhu began her first training session on Friday after the Sports Authority of India (SAI) sent a communication to all badminton Olympic probables to attend a coaching camp at the SAI Gopi Chand Academy in Hyderabad.
Taking safety measures to the next level, Sindhu sent her car to ferry coach Park Tae-Sang to the academy.
This was the first training session post the COVID-19 lockdown that was imposed in the wake of the ongoing pandemic.
Sindhu, who arrived at 6.30 AM along with her father P.V. Ramana, had a full-length badminton training session at the academy. The ace shuttler does her fitness training at the Suchitra Academy coached by her trainer M. Srikanth Verma.
Chief national coach P. Gopi Chand and support staff member Agus Dwi Santoso joined Park in a session of badminton which also saw Sindhu engage in one-versus-two sparring and then one-on-one with Gopi Chand and Park separately.
The entire venue was sanitised and no other staff members were permitted inside, including the media.
“I felt pretty comfortable. Didn’t feel any great difference in playing here after such a long gap. As I said, I should be okay in just two weeks. It is all about getting the rhythm and I am confident of getting it back at the earliest,” Sindhu told Sportstar .
“Essentially, since I have been working a lot on physical fitness during the lockdown, it was comparatively easy for me to get the feel of such a long session in badminton with a lot of ease," she added.
Speaking on sending their personal car to pick coach Park, Sindhu's father Ramana said: “Yes, we have given our car to the coach Park so that he can avoid travelling in a cab for the training sessions. We just didn’t want to take any risk in any issue. Safety of everyone is top priority for us.
Earlier, it was a different kind of experience for the star shuttlers including World Championship bronze medallist B. Sai Praneeth who was the second to come to the venue followed by women’s doubles specialist N. Sikki Reddy.
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