Heads and Tales | Two left feet

My German coach Heinz Reinkemeier’s favourite story is one of me and Valentina Turisini, the Italian Olympic silver medallist, playing badminton in his garden in a university town in Germany. A neighbour strolled by and inquisitively asked: “Who are they?” Replied Heinz: “They’re Olympic champions.” The neighbour was stunned: “I cannot believe it; I have never seen two such untalented movers.”

Extract from A Shot at History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold, by Abhinav Bindra with Rohit Brijnath, Harper Sport, 2011.