former badminton champion and coach pullela gopichand recently made a quick visit to inspect his upcoming academy in greater noida gopichands academy which will be run by the greater noida authority is part of the shaheed vijay singh pathik sports complex in greater noida during his visit the dronacharya awardee took stock of noidas sporting infrastructure and was quite impressed by what he saw speaking to us during his visit gopichand spoke about the badminton facilities in the city and why distance from delhi should not be a deterrent for greater noida developing as a sports huball praise for the infrastructure and facilities available to the players in the city gopichand labelled it the best in the country he told us i havent seen anything like this in india at least i am struggling to name one facility that can challenge this one in terms of infrastructure the only improvement i can think of here is adding ramps to make it wheelchairfriendly which has also been done partially many stadia dont even have this option but i see they have ramps here for the differentlyabled to get to the sitting area they just need to extend that to the playing area so that even paraathletes can use the facilitypullela gopichand at the shaheed vijay singh pathik sports complex in greater noida bccl pullela gopichand at the shaheed vijay singh pathik sports complex in greater noida bccltalking about how the sporting infrastructure in greater noida is superior to that of delhi gopichand said we have many great facilities in delhi like siri fort or thyagraj but what sets this one apart is you get everything under one roofhe adds you have a running track a gym a pool and centres for every major sport under one single complex from a training perspective you will not get anything better anywhere in ncr maybe even india you look at the overall facility and realise that a trainee athlete will get all his needs attended to under one roof because of that i think the distance from delhi shouldnt matter and anyway if one wants to train they should be prepared to travel great distances this is still close to the national capitalas a parting shot gopichand promised to return soon and make his visits to noida more frequent once the academy is operational i will be here at least once every month and supervise the training myself to an extent he said and would we see some of his famous protgs like pv sindhu and k srikanth here giving tips to noidas budding shuttlers hopefully yes gopichand said adding of course that depends on their schedule and tournaments but i would want them to come here and interact with kids the youngsters will learn a lot from that exposure