Badzine had originally planned to have a correspondent reporting live from on site in Seoul. However, for the second straight year, the tournament organizers have relegated the press to by far the worst seats in the house, with no security, and at practically the farthest point in the stadium from a ‘mixed zone’ that players are not obligated to enter. As a result, our correspondent has decided to skip the event for the first time in twelve years.
We will, however, report the news from off site with live images from our partner Badmintonphoto.
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Badminton has the absolute potential to be one of the leading world sports. Unfortunately such unprofessional tournament organization and the dirty games of the Chinese Badminton Federation will prevent Badminton from becoming really big.
Soon Badminton will have a credibility reputation like cycling.
The problem of working with 3rd world counties is you get organizers who fail to understand the finer details of an event! All well and good to have a court and let some players have a hit, but there is so much more to creating what should be an elite sporting event and some countries fail to recognize that fact! They are happy to put in a ‘half-assed’ effort or even don’t have the competency to understand how to run an event! Such as shame for the sport! And don’t even get us started on disgusting events of Chinese Badminton…………
I don’t believe that the notion of 3rd world is accurate or even relevant. In badminton, the quality of tournament or of promotion is often unrelated to the strength of the economy of the host nation. As for competency, I would hesitate to generalize. There are certain things that the Korea Open organizers have always done and continue to do very well. Even conditions for the press have been much better in the past. For whatever reason, though, those conditions have gotten worse at the event, rather than better.
What a sad situation when Badzine who do a fantastic job in reporting on and promoting badminton cannot be given suitable facilities at a premier tournament. Shame on BWF for allowing this to happen when they should be doing everything they can to promote the sport.
It must be an issue of balance; bringing in top players usually results in greater appeal for the sport, but there being only a handful of these top players, they are being overworked a bit.
Forcing players to play too many matches increases the risk of players injuring themselves which is absolutely catastrophic for a players career. They already have a short career in competitive sport anyways, which means a short window to earn income as a player. Its not like BWF will pay for the players rent and bills if they get injured playing as hard and often as they like them to.
Sunyhik, your comment seems more relevant to the other report from Day 2 as the incomplete matches are unrelated to the lack of live coverage on Badzine. Please feel free to repost there as it is a valid point. We have seen all too often recently what injuries can do, particularly to the Chinese players.
Don,
Eyea you are right, I think I pressed back twice accidently when my post got rejected due to a mistyped CAPTCHA code and just started writing without double checking I was on the right post..
Is that a surprise? BWF is dreaming to make badminton as big as Tennis. Dream on!
Until the BWF commits to making badminton a truly global sport it will always be relegated to second or third tier (or irrelevance) sporting status. Their concern with rules and regulations and catering and bowing to the current badminton powers is short sighted.
The minimum superseries tournament requirements for top players is too demanding, especially considering how comparatively poor the prize money/compensation is compared to mainstream professional sports.
I’m also very concerned about the future of badminton in the Olympics. The process for selecting the sports to be included in the 2020 Olympics is underway and the disqualifications at the London Games haven’t put badminton in a good light with the IOC. The IOC will be watching and I am not optimistic they will like what they see. Badminton is by no means a safe bet to remain on the Olympic program.