lin dan earned it as he is just dominating. I was quite surprised of peter gade performance, coming back from his injury. Being a finalist and required lin dan 3 games showed that peter is a solid opponent for the chinese.
I love both pictures. The first one conveys his joy, spirit and essence of victory. In the second one, he appears as if saying tacitly to the trophy (and the crowd), "don't worry, I'll be carrying you again, shortly...." Contrast this with his form just a year+ ago, when he had difficulty advancing past rounds of 32 and 16!! What a magnificant transformation! Well, magnificant to at least all the CHN fans, but not sure about all the fans of the opponents he victimized along the way....
Lin Dan is surely turning into a one-man show on world badminton. His consistency and panache surely surpasses just about everyone now, playing full of confidence and doing everything right. Throw any opponent to his path and it won't bother him much. In fact, he was so good that (if James' report was correct) he could afford to toy around with Gade in the first set. Could we be seeing a new star in the mould of Zhao Jianhua and Yang Yang coming of age? I sure hope so. Legends are hard to come by nowadays. Could Lin Dan be next? At this rate, he'd eclipse both the two by the end of his career.
Looking at those last 3 photos, it seemed like the Danes were oblivious of one another after the match. They went their seperate ways to jump and dance around and then finally, Eriksen turns around, and thinks, "oh wait a minute, there's my partner..." It's quite funny but I guess they were lost in the joy of the moment, as it was indeed a great victory for them.
