Dominant force in badminton likely to reign again at London Games

Boasting a high-octane mix of raw power and technical wizardry, China is badminton's heavy metal act and will be primed to rock the Wembley Arena when it headlines the Olympic tournament at the London Games.

China took three out of five titles on its home court at the 2008 Beijing Games to match its gold medal haul from Athens four years earlier, and expects to remain top of the pops at the northwest London venue, which has hosted the likes of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones over the decades.

Despite changes to the lineup since Beijing, men's singles title-holder Lin Dan remains the front-man of a sporting super-group laden with world champions and featuring both the men's and women's top-ranked players.

Women's doubles champion Yu Yang is back, albeit with a different partner in Wang Xiaoli, while long-serving head coach Li Yongbo is still the team's hard-bitten conductor.

The Olympic tournament will mark a triumphant encore for the team, who strutted into the Wembley Arena a year ago and marched out after the successful defense of all five world titles.

Li, however, has set a more modest benchmark, asking only that his players defend two of China's Olympic titles and try to win a third somewhere along the line.

"We took three titles at Beijing, but since it's an away tournament, it will be harder this time," said the 49-year-old, who won doubles bronze at badminton's inaugural Olympic tournament at the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Complacency danger?

In reality, Li may be disappointed if his charges fail to sweep the board, and it would seem complacency might be the biggest threat to their campaign, albeit an unlikely one.

China's women, led by world No 1 Wang Yihan, hold all of the top four singles rankings, while the men boast three of the top four.

Men's No 1 Lin, nicknamed "Super Dan" in his home country and rated by many as the greatest player of all time, humiliated long-time rival Lee Chong Wei in the final at Beijing and may only have his Chinese teammates to worry about in London.

Currently ranked second, Malaysia's Lee lost his long-held No 1 spot to Lin after suffering an ankle injury during a Thomas Cup match in May and faces a mammoth task to reach peak fitness for the Games.

By his own admission, Lee was only 70 percent fit when he met Malaysian reporters a month before the opening ceremony, and his dream of winning his country's first Olympic gold medal at his last Games appears set to be unfulfilled.

China's Yu and Wang head to London the top-ranked women's doubles pair and face their greatest threat from world No 2 teammates Tian Qing and Zhao Yunlei.

Zhao is also a hot chance to win a second gold as one half of the top-ranked mixed doubles pair with Zhang Nan.

The only event that China does not hold top spot in the world rankings is the men's doubles.

Even then, Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng are second only to South Korea's Chung Jae-sung and Lee Yong-dae and are the reigning doubles world champions.

They also burn to make amends for their upset loss in the gold medal match at Beijing to Indonesia's Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan.

Much of the tournament's intrigue will revolve around which teams can deny China complete hegemony. Women's world No 5 Saina Nehwal appears as equipped as any, and has raised India's hopes of a first badminton medal after upsetting China's best at the Indonesian Open last month.

While the sport was invented by the British, Asian nations have ruled the roost in recent decades and China, Indonesia and South Korea have won 23 out of 24 of the titles offered since badminton joined the Olympics.

Denmark's Mathias Boe and Carsten Mogensen, as the third-ranked men's doubles pair, may be the West's greatest hopes of an Olympic medal since fellow Dane Poul-Erik Hoyer Larsen won the men's singles at the 1996 Atlanta Games for the same country.

The Olympic badminton tournament takes place from July 28 - Aug 5.

(China Daily 07/18/2012 page22)