To prepare for the project, Sindhu and her husband, Venkata Datta Sai, spent their vacations studying some of the world’s leading sports facilities. File
| Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
P.V. Sindhu and Andhra Pradesh IT & HRD Minister Nara Lokesh laid the foundation stone for the P.V. Sindhu Centre for Sports Excellence in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday (August 5, 2026), marking the beginning of an ambitious project aimed at nurturing the next generation of India’s Olympic athletes.Spread across nearly two lakh square feet, the campus has been envisioned as an integrated sports and education ecosystem.What began as an initiative focused solely on badminton expanded into a multi-sport project following discussions with AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and will now cater to seven disciplines — badminton, table tennis, swimming, shooting, football, basketball and chess. The vision, Sindhu said, was to create a place where every discipline would receive equal importance from the outset.To prepare for the project, Sindhu and her husband, Venkata Datta Sai, spent their vacations studying some of the world’s leading sports facilities, visiting centres in Doha, Milan and Australia, among others. The trips, she said, became learning opportunities as they sought to understand global best practices in sports infrastructure and athlete development, joking that she now needed a “holiday from all her holidays”.“We put our sweat and blood into it. I can confidently tell you that it will be a world-class centre and, at the same time, it will be an institute where people will actually be like, ‘Wow, this is what we need in our state and in the country,’” Sindhu told The Hindu.
