When coach Park Tae Sang left for Tokyo, he had just 328 followers on Instagram. The number of followers on his account has now skyrocketed to 18000 after he captured the hearts of Indian badminton fans.
Park shot to fame in India with his exuberant celebrations in Tokyo when PV Sindhu won the bronze medal.
After going back to India, he also has had the opportunity to meet with the President and Prime Minister of India. The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi also uploaded a photo of them together on Instagram.
Sindhu’s and coach Park’s success comes at a price
Park’s wife and daughter live in South Korea while he is at Hyderabad training Sindhu. Since February of 2020, Park Tae Sang has had the chance to meet with his family for only 13 days because of the pandemic.
He told Indian Express, “My 4-year-old daughter (Soyu) would call me every day and say, ‘Papa when are you coming home?’ I felt very sad at times.
“After the pandemic, it was very tough for me and Sindhu. For almost two months we could not practice. But as soon as the cases went a little down we started practice and I decided to not go to Korea because it would further affect her training.”
Improvements he made in Sindhu’s game
Coach Park Tae Sang didn’t need to work much on Sindhu’s attack as her attacking shots were already excellent. He found out that there were some weaknesses in her defence.
With many tournaments cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic, he found the time needed to work on her defence. He was able to raise Sindhu’s defensive game by “200 percent” before the Olympics.
“Sindhu had this habit of making the shuttle contact very low. I always told her if she made contact one centimetre higher that would mean the opponent would have to retrieve a centimetre lower,” Park said.
