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A Second Wild Card



With the ending of the recent All-England badminton championships, all eyes turned on to some of the other major badminton events including Thomas/Uber Cup, World Championships, and Asian Games for 2014. One of the questions that is hotly debated in the badminton world: Does Lin Dan deserved a second wild card to participate in the World Championship come this August in Copenhagen, Denmark?

Some of you might wonder, why did Lin Dan need a wild card to participate consider that he has won two Olympic Gold Medals and five World Championship titles? The answer is simple. He doesn’t have the enough ranking points to earn him a better world ranking to qualify for the tournament. In order for you to make it to the World Championship, you need to have a good world ranking status and ranked ahead of your teammates as each country are allowed to send a maximum of three representatives. Of course, in the case of Lin Dan, he’s currently ranked 106th in the latest world ranking according to Badminton World Federation (BWF)’s ranking. The reason he has such a poor ranking is because his absence of badminton tournaments for a lengthy period. In 2013, he has only participated in only two tournaments: the Asian Championships in April and the World Championships in August. Furthermore, China has three singles players inside the top 10 ranking.

If Lin Dan managed to get a wild card to participate, this will be his second world card to participate in World Championship. In 2013, he managed to secure a wild card. He went on to beat arch-rival Lee Chong Wei to win his fifth world title in Guangzhou, China. This year, he’s trying to do the same thing he did last year. But he won’t be able to get enough ranking points even though he wins all the remaining titles before the closing of the eligible players list for the tournament. So, he needs a wild card entry to qualify for the big event.

Now comes the big question, does he deserved a second wild card? Let’s look at this question from a few different perspectives. First, let’s start from his CV. No doubt he deserved a wild card. As I mentioned earlier, he won two Olympic Gold Medals, five World Championship titles, five All-England titles and Asian Game champion. No other player in badminton has ever achieved that. Looking at this statistics, he could possibly go down as the best player ever to play the sports.

But think about again, every player in the tour flying around the world playing different levels of tournaments, working hard to earn valuable ranking points to make the cut. Lin Dan who has the ability to win titles just decides to sit back and take some rest for the season. This is extremely unfair to players around the world that worked hard to earn points to qualify for the tournament as Lin Dan has the luxury to plead his case to BWF hoping for a wild card at the very last minute to just compete in the big tournaments because of his impressive resume. No players should be exempted by the ranking system. It’s a ranking system that is designed and needs to be followed by all players.

For every badminton fans watching, everybody wants to witness the best of the best battling out on the court. With the participation of Lin Dan, no doubt his participation will definitely be a major boost for TV broadcasts and tickets revenue. Badminton fans from all over the world will be eagerly anticipating for some great exciting badminton especially a match-up against his nemesis - Lee Chong Wei.

As we know, Lee Chong Wei quite often falters to Lin Dan in the majors. The biggest win Lee Chong Wei has achieved against Lin Dan at badminton big stage is 2011’s All-England final. Apart from that, Lee has lost most of the major finals which include twice in the Olympic Games finals and twice in the World Championship finals. In order to prove that he’s the better player, he has to have the ability to beat Lin Dan at major tournaments. To be honest, he deserved to succeed well considered the enormous hard work and the talent he had. But most of the time, luck was just not with his side. So, it’s important for him to beat Lin Dan at a major championship to prove the world wrong about his mental fragility of playing against Lin Dan. His time is running out. If what he said in front of the press is true, we could be looking at him retiring at the end of this year.

A verdict should be made very soon by the BWF. In the meantime, let’s sit down and enjoy the sport. With a few young talents rising up, the stage is set for yet another exciting season of badminton.


By,
Zhe Xu
21st March 2014

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