After Sindhu, Chirag-Satwik also shift to Gachibowli Stadium for practice

Following in the footsteps of PV Sindhu, Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy have also shifted their practice sessions to the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad.

The Indian badminton doubles duo have commenced training on the court adjacent to Sindhu's.

The reigning world champion has been honing her Tokyo Olympic preparations at the Gachibowli Stadium since February under Korean coach Park Tae-sang. Prior to that, she trained at the Pullela Gopichand Academy for nearly a decade.

World No. 10 Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy have been preparing for the Tokyo Olympics under doubles coach Mathias Boe of Denmark.

They had been practicing at the SAI Gopichand National Badminton Academy before relocating to the much bigger Gachibowli Stadium some four to five days back.

According to Sportskeeda sources, Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy decided to train at the Gachibowli in order to acclimatize themselves to the stadium environment.

Tokyo Olympic badminton venue is similar to Gachibowli Stadium

The biggest reason for the shift to Gachibowli stadium is its similarity with Tokyo's badminton venue.

According to a source, who did not wish to be named:

“The badminton matches of the Tokyo Olympics will be played at the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza located in Chōfu, Tokyo. It is similar in capacity and size to the Gachibowli Stadium. It is a collective decision of the players, coaches and authorities to train at the Gachibowli Stadium. The move will help the duo when they compete in the Olympics.”

The badminton event at the Games is scheduled to be held from July 24 to August 2. The postponed Summer Games will be inaugurated on July 23. A total of 172 shuttlers will compete in five events, including men’s doubles

It will be the first Olympics for Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy and they are quite excited about it. They are training just beside PV Sindhu’s court under Boe's guidance. The sparring partners for the duo are the same as when they used to train at the SAI-Gopichand Academy.

Satwiksairaj Rankireddy (left) and Chirag Shetty

Sindhu’s logic behind moving to the Gachibowli Stadium was to take advantage of its resources to prepare for the international tournaments.

Speaking to Sportskeeda recently, Sindhu had said:

“When we have facilities of international standard, why not use that? If you want to compete against top-class players, you have to make sure everything is perfect. Gachibowli is a bigger and international-level stadium. Wherever we go, we will always be playing in bigger stadiums. Therefore, it is right to use such venues.”