Seeing him play with high emotion level, Iskandar inconsistency is more likely in between his ears, ie. psychological. Not sure how soon and how much that can be improved.
MF should also proposed Hendrawan to go for Yoga classes also so that he can be a Yoga trainer and then can systematically integrate his coaching structure with Yoga and tailor this when training with Iskandar.....
Somehow, I felt that the main job for those MS in the special squad is to be a machine to LCW.. to spar with him, do what he wants the person standing opposite him to do. That wont do any good to them at all but just continuously feeding LWC with shots to smash and net and all sorts of tricks. By the time LCW is done with them and retire, all of them will have no achievements under their own belt too, because all they can do is to feed shuttle to opponents to smash nicely. This is so unfair to them. Yes, they get to travel alot with LCW as he needs a lot a lot a lot of people to spar and warm up with him and he always said that he is lonely, alone in his room after his room mate left, mostly after quarter finals, and since now that he gets to decide, he will have a bunch of people to accompany him wherever he goes. Its a waste of taxpayer's money though.
Be it those players in the special project or not, to those who train with DLCW, they themselves should realize that it is not DLCW or Hendrawan that will and can mould them to be a better player other than themselves. Once upon a time in a hall not far away, many many years back during the time when Datuk Misbun was DLCW coach,, a player named Chan Kwong Beng bravely accept to be the sparring partner to DLCW which then eventually was kicked out by DMS because he was lazy.
Big (badminton) news in Denmark. Viktor Axelsen (World number 3) and Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus (World number 13) have a podcast called: Serve and Smash. Todays subject was Lee Chong Wei and both players quickly agreed that he was 1 of the most unsympathetic and arrogant players in badminton. In the podcast they share stories of encounters with Lee Chong Wei - and their reasons for disliking him. Victor Axelsen tells that if Lee Chong Wei has the chance, he will try and hit the man when smashing (especially smashes close to the net) and that he always tries to humiliate his opponent most humanly possible - even when leading comfortably. Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus shares a story from a training Camp in Malaysia where Lee Chong Wei forced some of the other players to wipe his sweat off the court and generally having a really bad attitude towards the younger players on the national training team. Link to podcast: Link to newsarticle: http://sport.tv2.dk/badminton/2017-...leverer-verdens-bedste-arrogant-og-usympatisk
not surprised... and this is coming from other players/people who have had first hand professional interactions w/ lcw, rather than only armchair fanboys typing into a discussion forum.
That is shocking. Coming from Axelsen I would not mind, but coming from Vittinghus, a player representative and MR. Nice Guy, it is quite disturbing. Perhaps there is a bit of partiality here because MF is a fellow Denmark (ex)player and a great figure in the country, but to go so far in the bad mouthing tells that animosity was there before the MF/LCW row. I think the two examples mentioned by Axelsen and Vittinghus could be explained though. LCW would definitively try to use means of intimidation on court. That can be understood, though it is not so nice. He is under a lot of pressure for winning, and he is not very strong mentally, so he perhaps needs this kind of gimmick. For the attitude towards other team players, this might be something normal in the BAM (or more broadly Asian) context, where juniors should serve seniors, in return for protection and nurturing.
Yeeeeah... LCW can play in all england after all. Injury aside the whole yadayada is all about nothing. Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Why do I feel like people are turning on Lee Chong Wei now after this drama? It's like a hive mind, one hops on it, everyone follow suit. I always try to look from others perspective when evaluating drama and claims by other players. I am not trying to say one is wrong and another is right, but if you look from Lee Chong Wei's perspective, whether he's justified or not, one thing we know is that he has been holding grudge against MF for about a year now, and that clearly translates into bias against him. Lee may be speaking from his clouded mind when he put all the blame onto MF but it's a grudge held for a long period of time. This is what happen when you don't settle your issue with other people. As a person who's on top of the game, you'd be hard pressed to not have some level of ego. He's a "Malaysian Hero" so to speak, of course he would be proud of his accomplishment and that would translate into ego. Look at Lebron James, he's the best player in the NBA, but every time I see him act nice and reserved, I feel like puking. He's starting to show his ego in recent times, and frankly, that's fine, because he's not faking it in front of the media. (to protect his image) Back on topic, I definitely see where Lee is coming from, he doesn't like people telling him he's growing older (just like my dad, he got mad at the whole family for jokingly called him old), so when MF allegedly imply to him that it is time to retire and leave the BAM so that they don't have to spend any more money on him, in a way is kind of like calling him a burden now that he's not as "useful". It's not like I can't see where MF was coming from, or if that was a huge misunderstanding on Lee's part, but remember, Lee held grudge against him for over a year, that would certainly create bias. He may have gone too far in this matter, but no matter how you spin it, he's still the best MS badminton player we have in Malaysia. He has the pride that comes along with his accomplishments. On the topic of other badminton players coming out with their experience with Lee, like renbo has said, in battle you use whatever edge you can get against your opponent, it's not only a physical battle but also a mental battle. Take the NBA for example, Lebron James won the 2016 NBA final after provoking Draymond Green into his one-game suspension, and he's trying to psyche Steph Curry out of his game too by showing dominance over him. There's nothing wrong with that, it's part of the game, just like how Lee succumb to pressure in big stage tournaments. As for Vittinghus' claim, it's indeed terrible in this generation, that sort of act is arrogance in this era, but you know how in the past, the juniors have always had to serve their seniors until they earn their due? It's definitely not the right thing to do in today's society because it is not politically correct, but you do this back in the day to toughen up your new guys. I personally don't like it, but like I said, perspective. Not to mention, Vittinghus is a visitor to Malaysia, it might have seemed terrible to him but did he personally ask the juniors about their feelings? I am not trying to defend Lee on every occasion, but I sure hope that people don't turn on him this easily, (just trying to stop the bleeding) especially since he's had relatively clean image before. (aside from the doping incident) P.S. I've also noticed a lot of bias on this forum, lots of hate against certain players and wank to certain players. I could find commonality in the said players but I'll leave it at that. Badminton is already a niche enough sports, with small fanbase compared to other sports, yet we have shown terrible attitude that would taint the image of the sports. I just hope we could all come along regardless of who we support.
It has also been mentioned by other players and experts, that LCW probably exaggerated his injury by some margin, in order to stick it to Morten Frost, and maybe also throw of the AE competitors a bit (and lower expectations and pressure on himself). Now he's the hero, fighting at AE even though he's injured and have an evil technical director. Instead of being the pain-in-the-ass superstar that want's everything his way, and still can't deliver the ultimate results. Let's see - I'm looking forward to AE next week. Pure fights on the court, instead of all this other crap.
I do agree with a lot of your points. But they are more like explainations for why he's acting the way he is (ego, national hero, age, long term grudge, etc)... I agree with all of it, but do that make his actions right? (by right I mean, should BAM give in to it and allow it). And one thing that puzzles me in your post is this: LCW claims to have a serious knee injury, which he says will cause him to miss AE. MF then asks Hendrawan, if he thinks the injury could spell the end of LCW's career. How do you translate that to: "...so when MF allegedly imply to him that it is time to retire and leave the BAM so that they don't have to spend any more money on him". As for Vittinghus' perception of LCW during his stay in Malaysia (where he was in Misbun Sidek's camp BTW), there's likely a lot of cultural differences playing a role, but Vittinghus do elaborate a bit in the podcast, as to not just one particular incident he saw, but the general feeling he had of the hierarchy and LCW's methods of maintaining said hierarchy. Now, having such a hierarchy might have been fine back then in Malaysia - it sure as hell is not fine in Denmark, and I'm sure that MF would not approve of such behavior if he's calling the shots. So such cultural differences probably are the basis for the beginning of the grudge, causing LCW to isolate him from MF. A lot can be said of pros and cons of going different ways about things, but we have to admit, that the "Danish way" have given tremendous results, compared to the budgets and raw number of players, all the national federations have had to operate with. And thats probably the reason why our coaches are hired all around the world. And when BAM hires MF (again, knowing him from his first outing there), its a sign they want things to transform a bit in that direction - and this cause a clash with LCW's personal whishes for the final part of his career, and thus from day one, it's not in LCW's interest to get close to MF. It's a ticking bomb waiting to blow up. Regarding LCW's image, they discuss that in the podcast as well - questioning that LCW was named player of the year by BWF, the same year where he was returning from his doping suspension. As they say, he's so far the only badminton player ever to have tested positive (which by no meas is a guarantee that he's the only doped, given that a lot of asian federations are know to not conduct proper tests). Finally, the OP of this podcast story focused only on the few controversial parts in it. VA and HKV do spend time talking about LCW's badminton achievements, and how they respect his skill, effort and abilities, and they also mention other top players (Chen Long) that they say they find highly sympathic - it's not like they are just throwing **** at the fan. ------ Some other Danish expert has pointed out the fact that MF would probably find himself in a lot of problems in Malaysia, being called out by LCW like this, and they think the ONLY reason he is not yet fired, is that BAM simply cannot dismiss him, because they are not the ones who have hired him. MF is apparently hired by Malaysian goverment, not BAM. As he say, badminton in Malaysia is a different topic from badminton in the rest of the world - and one thing is what we read about the matter in the media outside Malaysia, another thing is how Malaysian fans and organizers see things.
He's actually not the only player, Sigit Budiarto received a two-year ban for testing positive for Nandrolone in 1998 (English source: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/drugs-in-sport-samaranch-claims-battle-can-be-won-1179692.html ; German source: http://sport.orf.at/stories/2012761/). That's also a lot more serious than LCW's positive test since it's an actual anabolic steroid, used as a PED instead of battling inflammation (the stuff LCW tested positive for has no significant positive influence on performance). That German report is mainly on Zhou Mi, who received a 2-year ban in 2010 for using Clenbuterol, also an anabolic steroid (fairly popular with bodybuilders).
Correct. I should have said "of current MS players". Also there was the suspicious whereabouts suspensions of the Koreans. While not a positive test, it's a no good indicator... Michael Rasmussen was pulled out of Tour de France while leading the race, because of some whereabouts issues (he had stated incorrect whereabouts leading up to the race), and years after, that he admitted to having doped in the period...
