HYDERABAD: How many of us have heard of the sport Taekwondo. Or maybe a better question would be, ‘how many of us look at Taekwondo as a profitable career path?’ If your answer to one or both of these is ‘no’, city lad B Sai Deepak is here to change that.
The 25-year-old dreams of a day when India looks at other sports outside of popular ones like cricket, badminton and football, as a viable career choice. “While I can see some growing enthusiasm towards other sports, I want people to pay attention to martial arts too — especially taekwondo,” says the youngest Indian to hold four Guinness World Records.
He was recently invited to be the chief guest at the Andhra and Telangana ICSE & ISC Teakwondo tournament 2022, where he spoke about how he ended up realising his dream. “Right from my childhood, I remember my father entertaining me with martial arts. When in school, I chose to learn karate and in 2008, I learned something called ‘taekwondo’ being an Olympic sport, so I decided to work towards that.
I began looking for a good trainer, was injured, got a knee surgery in 2020 after which I had to visit a rehabilitation centre and then finally got to train in Pune. I went on to participate in the Russian championships and have now decided to train younger kids to become champions for the country,” says an enthusiastic Sai.
The athlete gave up his well-paying corporate job to start his own company — to dedicate his time and resources to training 20 talented kids. “In a recent competition in which these kids participated, they won over 15 medals in total! They have a bright future and I want to help them reach there. I hope nobody will have to look for coaches like I did. Just figuring what they want to do in life is not enough for them, I’m also looking to get sponsors who will help them realise that dream,” he tells CE.