Allow Olympic-bound Indian athletes to train after testing them: Vimal

With the COVID-19 pandemic halting all sport activities, India's former chief badminton coach Vimal Kumar on Tuesday urged the government to allow the Olympic-bound athletes to continue their training after conducting the required tests.

Following the respective directives of the Talengana and Karnataka governments, the Pullela Gopichand academy in Hyderbad and Prakash Padukone Academy in Bangalore have been shut down for two weeks.

Rio silver medallist P V Sindhu, men's singles player B Sai Praneeth and men's doubles pair of Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy have so far assured themselves of a berth at the Tokyo Olympics.

"I feel sad for the sports community. They follow healthy lifestyle, they have good immunity unlike general public. So I believe the government should look at ways to test these athletes who have already qualified and allow them to train," Vimal told PTI.

"If it was some other year I wouldn't have said so but it is an Olympic year, it comes after every four years. So put them through constant testing and even if some test positive I believe they will recover in two weeks time."
"There is lot of uncertainty right now. If things improve, how will the BWF go about organising the events, we don't know. But nothing is in our hand."