Name: Pullela Gopichand
Born: 16 November 1973, Nagandla, Andhra Pradesh
State: Andhra Pradesh
Sport: Badminton
Early life
Pullela Gopichand was born on 16 November 1973 in Nagandla, near Chirala in Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh. He was drawn to cricket as a boy, but it was his elder brother who steered him towards badminton instead, a decision that would eventually go on to change the course of Indian sport in ways nobody could have predicted at the time. He trained for years under S.M. Arif and later worked closely with Prakash Padukone and Ganguly Prasad at the Sports Authority of India in Bangalore, building the game that would carry him to the top of world badminton.
National dominance and international breakthroughs
Gopichand won the National Badminton Championship five years running, from 1996 to 2000, and took gold at the SAARC tournaments in Vijayawada in 1996 and Colombo in 1997. At the 1998 Commonwealth Games he won silver in the team event and bronze in the men’s singles, and in 1999 he won the Toulouse Open and the Scottish Open, results that steadily built his reputation on the international circuit.
All England glory in 2001
Gopichand’s defining moment came at the All England Open Championships in 2001, where he beat Peter Gade in the semi-final and Chen Hong of China in the final to become only the second Indian, after his own mentor Prakash Padukone, to win the title, more than two decades after Padukone had first done so in 1980. He reached a career-high ranking of world number five that year, all the more remarkable given the persistent knee injuries that had troubled him for much of his career and would eventually force an early retirement from competitive badminton, well before his talent had been exhausted.
Building a coaching empire from nothing
After retiring, Gopichand set up the Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad in 2008, reportedly mortgaging his own house to get it started before the industrialist Nimmagadda Prasad stepped in with funding on the condition that the academy produce Olympic medals for India. It did. Under Gopichand’s coaching, PV Sindhu won silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics and bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and later became the first Indian to win a BWF World Championships gold, while Saina Nehwal won bronze at the 2012 London Olympics. Parupalli Kashyap, Srikanth Kidambi and B. Sai Praneeth are among the other Indian players who came through his academy, making it arguably the single biggest driver of Indian badminton’s rise on the world stage over the past decade.
Recognition and later work
Gopichand was honoured with the Arjuna Award in 1999, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna in 2001, the Padma Shri in 2005, the Dronacharya Award in 2009 for his coaching, and the Padma Bhushan in 2014. He served as India’s Olympic badminton coach at the Rio Games in 2016 and continues to serve as chief national coach for Indian badminton. Beyond the badminton court, he set up the Gopichand-Mytrah Foundation to support talented young athletes across other sports, and later launched a meditation initiative for Indian athletes ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, part of a broader effort to look after the mental side of preparation alongside the physical.
Family
Gopichand married fellow badminton player PVV Lakshmi in 2002, and the couple have two children, daughter Gayatri, who also plays badminton at a competitive level, and son Vishnu.
Achievements and awards
All England Champion, 2001; silver medallist, team event, and bronze medallist, singles, 1998 Commonwealth Games; world number five ranking, 2001; national champion, 1996-2000; Arjuna Award, 1999; Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, 2001; Padma Shri, 2005; Dronacharya Award, 2009; Padma Bhushan, 2014; coach to Olympic medallists PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal; founder, Gopichand Badminton Academy.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
