HYDERABAD: Describing Saina Nehwal as a 'phenomenal', her coach Pullela Gopichand today said if Saina had not won the Olympic medal, his life would have been incomplete.
Saina and Gopichand returned here from London to a warm welcome. "Without this medal, I would have felt incomplete. What more I can say," Gopichand said at a packed press conference sitting beside Saina.
"I had dreamt that one day, we will bring an Olympic medal. All my goals have been fulfilled. But it was a real challenge. There have been a lot of ups and downs in the last year. Saina had lost to 11 different players. When she lost the Denmark event, she came to me weeping and said 'Bhaiya it's not happening.' She was weeping and I also started crying. But I told her "We will win Olympic medal," Gopi said revealing what they went through before success came calling.
Gopichand also spoke about hard training they put in top make dream a reality.
"At 9:30pm the lights will be put off since we had to be there at 4:30 am for the training. I did not want to miss a single session. All the hard work has now paid off," the soft-spoken Gopichand said.
Asked if he considers Saina the best ever badminton player the country has seen so far, he said, "She is phenomenal. She has done better than all of us. I have told her that now she should look to 2020 Olympics. She will have two more Olympics, two Asian Games and two Commonwealth Games."