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Lalita Iyer
Lalita Iyer

HYDERABAD

Sports academy in a different league

1-gymnastics (File) Representative image

Behind every winning athlete, there is a hard working coach and we have understood this in recent times. This is not to imply that the skill of the athlete does not matter, but it is the coach who shapes the athlete into becoming that award winning player. It has been amply proved by Saina Nehwal, P.V.Sindhu, and in recent times Roger Federer.

To keep on the good word and bring in the proper synergy, suitably the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Foundation and Mytrah Foundation have come together to launch a first-of-its-kind coach-led athlete-centric sports initiative in India.

While the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Foundation is now a popular name because of all the winners coming out of that stable, Gopichand himself has been playing a serious role in creating a place where there is synergy between the player, coach, physios and many others.

Incidentally two Olympic medalists and close to 1000 national medalists had emerged out of the academy. In fact, the academy has been awarded the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar under a new category of establishment and management of Sports Academies of Excellence.

The Mytrah Foundation supports sports, education, health and entrepreneurship. It is probably the CSR arm of Mytrah Energy, one of India’s pioneering renewable Independent Power Producers with a 3,000MW portfolio of which 1,000MW is operating (16 projects across 8 states), 700MW is under construction and 1,300MW is under advanced
development.

With these two institutions getting together, it is a blessing in disguise for players, since the aim of this collaboration is to bridge the gap in Indian sports sector and make it more scientific. The focus is to develop a sports ecosystem with coaches, athletes, scientific staff. The initial focus will be in athletics and badminton and to help athletes reach global levels.

This is the result of hard work of Gopichand, Ramesh Nagapuri, SAI National Coach and Dronacharya award winner and the Mytrah Foundation. Gopi will be the overall mentor.
While the first phase will obviously start with Hyderabad, sub-centres will be developed in a phased manner across the country.

Primarily promising athletes will be selected with the help of scientific methods and will then be trained by coaches empowered with the best global practices.

Athletes will be provided scientific training, with appropriate tournament exposure, and the best tools and equipment will be used to maximise their potential. The idea is to use an integrated approach where coaches, sports science staff, athletes and the research team will work cohesively to create a nurturing environment for the whole ecosystem.

Ravi Kailas, chairman, Mytrah Energy, said “Our longer term objective is to support the Niti Aayog in its goal of enabling India to win 50 medals in the 2024 Olympics.”

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Topics : #sports

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