HYDERABAD: In any victory, it is the player and the coach who are credited for the results. There are always a few who work behind the scenes and hardly get recognised. When ace shuttler Kidambi Srikanth reached three consecutive Super Series finals in Singapore, Indonesia and Australia, everyone was gung-ho about the Guntur lad’s achievement.
But little did the fans know that it was physio Dr Kiran Challagundla, who worked tirelessly to get Srikanth back to optimum fitness after he suffered a recurring ankle injury post the 2016 Olympics, which kept him out of action for nearly three months.
Kiran has been associated with the Indian badminton team for the last eight years. Before that, he worked with the now defunct IPL team Deccan Chargers. It is no secret that almost all the senior players at the Pullela Gopichand Academy work closely with him. It’s he who charts the fitness and training regimen for them, after a detailed study of body specifics.
“It’s tough to formulate plans for everyone. But that’s the job I have to do. And when your work brings results, it’s a delight. All I can say is we focus on making a player play to his full potential and making them peak during a desired tournament. For that to happen we need enough time on our hands, which is about 3-4 months,” Kiran told Express.
With the World Championship beginning on August 21 in Glasgow and asked whether the India players in fray will be able to peak at the right time, he said, “This is what we have been working towards for the past few months. The World Championship cut-off was April 30, and we knew who the players were going to be. So we should get good results. Also, some players made the cut much later in July, as some players pulled out of the championship, so we haven’t got the required amount of hours with them. But all the players should do good there.”
An important aspect that Kiran touched upon is how people think that fitness and getting injured is related to genes, and that Indians get injured because they are genetically not strong enough. Clearing the misconception, the 37-year-old physio said, “Fitness and getting injured is not related to genes. It’s just about how you manage the workload on your body. Nowadays, fitness for all the countries is almost at par. Having said that, the number of tournaments they play these days, it’s not possible to remain injury-free,” he concluded.
madhav@newindianexpress.com