The credit for the shuttlers' success goes to Handoyo: Gopichand

Bengaluru, November 2: Pullela Gopichand landed in Kolkata on Wednesday to attend a function organised by one of the city's leading business groups. The company in association with the Virat Kohli Foundation has decided to introduce annual awards for sports personalities. Gopichand has been made the chairman of the selection committee and other members of the selection committee include PT Usha, Anjali Bhagwat, Mahesh Bhupati and Arjun Halappa.

The current year has seen a massive rise in men's badminton and the Dronacharya badminton coach opened up about his shuttler's tremendous success over phone. Talking about the good show by the lads, especially Kidambi Srikanth and HS Prannoy Gopichand stated, "The credit if you ask me for their success should obviously go to Mulyo Handoyo. He is the man behind the stage who has guided Srikanth to such an amazing performance."

Handoyo is the former coach of Taufik Hidayet, former World champion and gold medal winner in Olympics. Handoyo was roped in by Gopichand last year January and six more Indian coaches who were former players had also joined Handoyo as the assistant of singles coach for the Indian players.

Gopichand, speaking on Handoyo's contribution explained, "He had basically stressed on the improvement of fitness. I used to do speed sessions with Kidambi, Sindhu, Prannoy, Praneeth, and Saina initially so that they can develop speed. Now Handoyo has been offering the same speed session but with a little change. The players were beginning with long endurance session and without taking a break they were moving towards the speed session. Interestingly, under Handoyo's training system the players are getting a lot of breaks. After completing a session for only 45 minutes, the players are getting a couple of minutes rest before starting another session and in this way, the fitness level of all academy boys have reached a fantastic level. That is the key to Kidambi's success."

Gopichand expressed his desire for the Indonesian coach to stay in Hyderabad with these boys till Tokyo Olympics in 2020.