Badminton
Kim Ji Hyun steps down as Indian women's singles coach
With less than a year to go for the Tokyo Olympics, Korea-based Kim Ji Hyun has stepped down from her position as Indian women’s singles coach on personal grounds.
With less than a year to go for the Tokyo Olympics, Korea-based Kim Ji Hyun has stepped down from her position as Indian women’s singles coach on personal grounds. The 45-year-old Kim, who is believed to have played a crucial role in guiding P V Sindhu to her World Championships gold medal at Basel, has stepped down to attend to her ailing husband, Ritchie Marr, in New Zealand, who suffered a neuro stroke.
Sindhu, two years after being robbed of a gold medal by Okuhara at Glasgow, turned her erratic season on its head with her title-winning dominance over the same opponent at the BWF World Badminton Championships held in Basel, Switzerland last month.
India’s chief national coach Pullela Gopichand told PTI,
It is true, Kim has resigned as her husband is pretty unwell. He suffered a kind of neuro stroke sometime during the World Championships. So she rushed back. She needs to take care of him as it will take around 4 to 6 months for him to recover.
Kim, a gold medallist in the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games, was roped in by the Badminton Association of India (BAI) earlier this year. Interestingly enough, Kim is India’s third foreign coach to have resigned even before the completion of her tenure. Before Kim, men’s singles coach and Indonesia-based Mulyo Handoyo had resigned from the Indian team citing personal reasons. Earlier this year, India’s doubles coach Tan Kim Her had also stepped down without completing his tenure.
"We are trying to get someone to fill in her boots. But it will be again a stop-gap arrangement. We need to find a permanent solution," Gopichand said. With the Tokyo Games barely ten months away, BAI will now have to quickly find a replacement for Kim.
