When you conduct an interview, the endeavour is always to make your subject comfortable, to get them to open up and be at their best. We had just finished the interview when Treesa Jolly, playing her best badminton at the moment, said with a smile, “Sir, this is the first interview where we have opened up like this and talked. We generally don’t speak much.”
That one comment made the interview for me.
Thirty-five minutes flew past, and the conversation gave me a deep insight into how Treesa and Gayatri prepared for the World Championships and eventually turned that preparation into a medal.
Before speaking to them, I had spoken to Pullela Gopichand, yet another fascinating conversation that will soon be aired on RevSportz. He told me something that was particularly striking.
“When you speak to the girls, ask Treesa this,” he told me. “She came up to me about seven or eight weeks ago and said she wanted to speak to me. Never has she said anything like this and I was surprised. I felt she had something really serious to say, because she had never before made an appointment like this. Then she came and all she said was, ‘Sir, is World Championship mein medal jeetna hai. We have to win a medal.’ Not one more word after that, and you must ask her about it.”
I did ask Treesa, and she remembered the occasion vividly.
“I was coming back from injury and had not even started training,” she said. “I did go up to Gopi Sir and said to him that whatever happens, we need to win a medal at our home World Championships. Gaya and I have been discussing this for a long time, and I can’t tell you what this medal means to us both. We used to dream about it and today it has come true.”
While crediting their entire support team for the way they were able to perform, both players also helped put into context the effort that has gone into their success over the last few months.
“I can’t explain what it means to have my father sitting behind us on the chair as part of the coaching team,” said Gayatri. “If he tells me to serve to the back court, I will do it. If he tells Treesa to smash, she will do the same. We have blind faith in him.”
Treesa jumped in and added: “For a long time, I was not comfortable playing at the front court. I was confused. Gopi Sir changed our game, and now we are interchanging a lot. Even our opponents were taken aback because they had never seen us play like this. We want to keep getting better and win more for the country.”
As I was about to close the interview, Treesa interjected again.
“We have never seen a crowd like this,” she said. “We couldn’t believe the kind of support that we got in Delhi.”
Proud medallists, these two young women who have worked incredibly hard are now an inspiration for many more who want to play badminton.
They are the kind of stories that make sport what it is.
Watch the full interview on RevSportz at 12 noon.
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