PV Sindhu has a coach I didn’t have, Pullela Gopichand’s wife says

Pullela Gopichand’s wife Lakshmi, also a shuttler, represented India in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The former national champion now helps her husband run an academy in Hyderabad that has already produced two Olympic medal winners: Saina Nehwal (bronze at London Games, 2012), and the current toast of the nation, PV Sindhu, the Rio silver medallist.

“The idea is to provide today’s generation what we didn’t have,” Lakshmi told Mirror when we mentioned Gopi’s rigorous schedule for his wards. “Sindhu has what I didn’t have back then – my husband as coach,” she said.

Lakshmi said it was unfair to criticise sportspersons for failing to excel at the highest level because India still has a long way to go in terms of infrastructure. “What we are trying to do at the academy is to eliminate the difficulties we faced. Back then, the main stadium would be unavailable for months due to political and social events. Once, the entire stadium was shut because the ballot boxes were kept there,” she said.

She is not the proverbial woman behind a successful man who tells him how wrong he has been. PVV Lakshmi, in that sense, is different. An elegant combination of a professional, mother and housewife, she has been Pullela Gopichand’s support system through thick and thin — a pillar of sorts, behind the most successful coach in Indian sport.