Photo Credit: AFPPusarla Venkata Sindhu better known as PV Sindhu is an Indian professional badminton player. At the 2016 Summer Olympics held in Rio, she became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic silver medal. The youngest recipient of India's fourth highest civilian honor, the Padma Shri, her silver medal win in women's singles made her the first Indian shuttler to reach the final of an Olympics badminton event and the youngest Indian to finish in an individual event at the Olympics.In order to become a champion, she was trained by coach Pullela Gopichand, a former Indian badminton player who is the Chief National Coach for the Indian Badminton team. He runs the Gopichand Badminton Academy where he trained her and also banned junk food and sweets from Sindhu’s diet in the run up to the Games. He states, “Sugar hampers recovery, it causes inflammation." Sindhu who blindly follows her coach has been training with him for the past 12 years. Her favourite foods, chocolates and Hyderabadi biryani, have been banned by her strict coach who strictly keeps an eye on her meals, sleeping pattern as well as training.
Hyderabadi Biryani.
Every meal that PV Sindhu had was constantly supervised and measured out. But that wasn’t the challenge, the real challenge was with her appetite which is very less. She was given high calorie foods when she wasn’t feeling hungry enough. During the Games, her diet focused on high energy, protein-based or recovery inducing foods. From her formative years at the legendary coach’s academy, PV Sindhu learnt that in pursuit of excellence, little pleasures of life need to be sacrificed. However, after etching her name in the Indian history an elated coach said, “I had deprived her from having sweet curd which she likes most. I also stopped her from eating ice-cream. Now she can eat whatever she wants."
After landing back home at kokapet her mother P Vijaya cooked, biryani and Mysore pak, a sweet, that she had not eaten in months as she was training for the Rio Olympics.
Every meal that PV Sindhu had was constantly supervised and measured out. But that wasn’t the challenge, the real challenge was with her appetite which is very less. She was given high calorie foods when she wasn’t feeling hungry enough. During the Games, her diet focused on high energy, protein-based or recovery inducing foods. From her formative years at the legendary coach’s academy, PV Sindhu learnt that in pursuit of excellence, little pleasures of life need to be sacrificed. However, after etching her name in the Indian history an elated coach said, “I had deprived her from having sweet curd which she likes most. I also stopped her from eating ice-cream. Now she can eat whatever she wants."
After landing back home at kokapet her mother P Vijaya cooked, biryani and Mysore pak, a sweet, that she had not eaten in months as she was training for the Rio Olympics.
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