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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.
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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.
