Saina Nehwal confirms her reunion with Pullela Gopichand

Indian shuttle queen Saina Nehwal has confirmed her much-talked about reunion with former coach Pullela Gopichand on Monday afternoon. In a series of tweets, the former World No. 1 admitted that she had been thinking about moving back her base to Hyderabad for some time and her erstwhile mentor has agreed to take her back under his wings.

Saina also took the opportunity to thank her current coach, Vimal Kumar for guiding her for the last three years during which she scaled the summit of the world rankings, clinched two World Championships medals along with a few Superseries titles.

Nehwal’s confirmation comes after news broke earlier in the morning, speculating that they had joined forces again.

Saina has had an extremely fruitful stint with the chief national coach, who helped her create history as the first Indian to clinch an Olympic medal in badminton in 2012 among many other accomplishments. They had parted ways in September 2014 when Saina shifted her base to Bangalore to train under Vimal Kumar as the former All England Open champion could not give her the individual attention that she was looking for.

Saina had told the media at that time that she was not satisfied with the training she was getting as she believed her game required sharpening. For that, the determined girl went seeking for a new voice.

That resulted in an apparent rift between the two and they are said to have maintained distance since.

It was only at the recently-concluded 2017 World Championships in Glasgow in August that the two patched up and Saina began talking with Gopichand again.

The 27-year-old, who had a knee surgery in September last year, finished her 2017 World Championships campaign on a high by capturing a bronze, showing that she still has the passion and hunger to excel in her sport.

About the author

Sudeshna is a veteran Indian Sports and International Tennis journalist as well as editor at Sportskeeda. She has an overall experience of over 10 years with top publications like The Bridge, Fox Sports Asia, and gained a keen interest in Indian sports since the 2002 Commonwealth and Asian Games when she was in school.

Sudeshna holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She attends tournaments regularly and being a highly experienced journalist, she ensures she only contacts the correct people from her network for the most authentic information to be put in her articles.

Sudeshna’s favorite Indian athlete is PV Sindhu owing to her big-tournament performances. She also admires Tennis legend Rafael Nadal for his resilience and has witnessed the Spaniard in action at the French Open, due to which, Roland Garros is her all-time favorite Grand Slam tournament.

Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics made a lasting impact on Sudeshna. She has also interviewed him along with Badminton star Chirag Shetty and several other sports personalities. She has done on-ground reporting on multiple ITF tournaments along with the Premier Badminton League, Asian Boxing Championships and the Davis Cup.

When not using her skills and years of experience in crafting compelling content, Sudeshna likes to read, watch movies and travel.

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