The badminton world championships will start in Tokyo, Japan on Monday, and the most talked about conversation is the women’s singles.
For the Chinese team, from the inception of the World Championships to 2011, they won 15 women’s singles championships in the 19 events, but they have never won the gold medal in the event since then. At this World Championships, Tokyo Olympic champion Chen Yufei is striving to help the Chinese women’s singles end the embarrassing championship drought.
The Chinese team will compete in four World Championships this year: men’s singles, women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles. Two of the doubles tasks are for gold. And because the ranking is too low, the entire men’s doubles group missed the World Championships, the players will participate in the Japan Open held in Osaka after the World Championships.
The competition in the men’s singles event is fierce. Shi Yuqi, who was specially approved to participate during the suspension period, led the other two national feather players, Lu Guangzu and Zhao Junpeng, but all three missed the top 16 seeds because of their unsatisfactory world rankings.
Shi Yuqi according to IC photo
In the women’s singles event, Guoyu won a full number of seats, and the Tokyo Olympic women’s singles champion Chen Yufei led the other three main players to attack the world championship women’s singles champion.
Once upon a time, the national feather women’s singles almost “monopolized” the championships at all levels in the world championships. The eight consecutive championships of the world championships almost made foreign opponents desperate.
Since the birth of the World Championships, the national feather women’s singles has been the absolute ruler. In the 19 World Championships before 2011, they won 15 gold medals. Gong Ruina, Xie Xingfang, Zhang Ning, Zhu Lin, Lu Lan, Wang Lin, Wang Yihan, etc. A large number of famous players have won the championship. Especially from 2001 to 2011, they achieved the feat of winning 8 consecutive world championships. This also made later foreign players such as Ma Lin and Xin Dehu quite unhappy, believing that the Chinese team had “monopolized” the championship of the event.
However, after the Chinese team won 5 gold medals in the 2011 World Championships, the national feather women’s singles slumped.Haven’t won a gold medal in 11 years so far. Although Li Xuerui reached the final of two consecutive World Championships in 2013 and 2014, she lost to Indanon and Ma Lin successively. After Wang Yihan, Wang Shixian and Li Xuerui retired, Guoyu’s women’s singles fell into a short dark period. During this period, foreign women’s singles rose strongly. Ma Lin won three world championships in 2014, 2015 and 2018. Japanese doubles Nozomi Okuhara and Akane Yamaguchi. He also won the championship in 2017 and 2021 respectively. “Cashier” Sindhu also realized his dream in the 2019 World Championships. It can be seen that in the past 10 years, the age of winning the International Women’s Singles World Championships is generally around 21-24 years old, showing a younger trend.
Chen Yufei shoulders the burden
This year’s national feather women’s singles Chen Yufei, He Bingjiao, Wang Zhiyi, and Han Yue got the chance to participate, and the biggest hope of winning the championship is still Chen Yufei.
For Chen Yufei, who once won the women’s singles champion of the World Youth Championship, in the past few years, she has gradually grown from a rookie to two team world champions in the Sudirman Cup and Uber Cup, as well as the most important player in the world. Olympic champion, only in the World Championships, her best result was only in the top 4, not only failed to win the championship, but also did not even advance to the final. So far this season, Chen Yufei has been getting better and better. He has entered the finals of five open tournaments, and won the Indonesia Masters championship, plus four runners-up. For the fifth time in the World Championships, Chen Yufei made every effort to compete for the championship and successfully completed the Grand Slam.
Chen Yufei won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics according to IC photo
Judging from the results of the lottery, Chen Yufei was placed in the 3/4 zone. Before the top 4, the strong opponents that could be met were Thailand’s two major players, Inthanon Ratchano and Li Weiwei. If they can advance to the top four, their opponent in the semi-finals is likely to be the old rival Tai Tzu-ying from Chinese Taipei, and the two will continue their feud. So far this season, the two have played against each other 4 times, and both sides have won 2 times each. However, in terms of the overall game record, Chen Yufei is still at a disadvantage with 6 wins and 17 losses. I look forward to the two meeting again.
After successfully losing weight last year, He Bingjiao has made significant progress this year. She has won the German Open and the Korea Masters. She has also reached the semi-finals of the Indonesia Masters and Indonesia Open, and she has also participated in the World Championships many times. Veteran, won third place in both 2018 and 2021. Wang Zhiyi also won 1 championship and 2 Asians this year.
The national feather women’s singles has now formed a certain group advantage, and each player has the strength to compete with the world‘s top players. It is very hopeful to break the embarrassing history of 11 years of no championships in the World Championships.
Red Star News reporter Hu Minjuan
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