In response to Phaarix last post: There is only so much a great and fit player can bear in terms of fitnes. Nobody is a Superman! There are numerous cases where a better player has lost in the finals to an inferior player because the better player has to endure gruelling and longer matches in the previous rounds. An example is Pulella Gopichand won AE 2001 beating Chen Hong in the finals. Chen Hong was physically drained after winning his semifinals in a long 3 set match while Gopichand had a relatively comofortable 2 sets win in the semifinals. We all know Chen Hong is a better player than Gopichand because Gopichand was a one tournament winner wonder. Imagine if a player had to go through numerous long 3 set matches before the finals and play against a player who had easy wins on the way to the final. There are limits to greatness because the body can only endure so much. And yes one of the criteria of being a great player is being physically fit. Stamina does define a great player just as much as skills and playing ability. What is the point of being skillful but you run out of steam to exercise those skills on court. One of the groundbreaking achievements of Rudy Hartono was that he lift the level of fitness of a badminton player to an unprecedented level with his training. Fitness is very important in badminton because it is a very fast game that may last up to 2 hours (old scoring system) or 1.5 hours (new scoring system).
The Nederland soccer team you are talking about won the 1988 European Championship which is the second greatest soccer tournament after the World Cup. That is a quite an achievement in itself!
Well, according to their standards, they should have won the World Cup twice. I dun think European Championship is good enough because the South Americans giants like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Columbia didn't participate. Okie, there's no point arguing more and more. The example I give here is just to show that a legend doesn't need to win all the "prestige" championships.
Whether a tournament is prestigious or not depends on the state of mind. If a vast majority of people think the All-England is prestigious, then it is prestigious. It has none to do with prize money or competitiveness or level of attendance. However, tournaments which are deemed to be prestigious are by nature, more competitive and more highly attended. Players look forward to these prestigious tournaments and are geared towards it. Even more than the other events, players will fight to the last in what they deem prestigious events.
great players are not great because of the tournaments that they won. i believe great players are determined by their tenacity, consistency, personality, spirit and being humbled by all the above. domination is the one being determined by how many tournaments have been won by a player. but really great players are above that. i have always respected humble champions. for they know they are probably not the best and probably will not dominate for too long but while they are up there, they will enjoy it and enjoy their fans. so really, what are you guys looking for, great players or players who dominate. because you see, agassi have always been a great player to me even when he was supposedly below pete sampras and roger federer. go figure. he he he.
Why not? The richest thoughts and discoveries are revealed when people go way off the road........don't you think so?
Off topic-Yes, thanks for rectifying.. ..yes, he indeed won it ..*sigh* how can i totally overlooked that ..So at least, if doesn't win the WC and/or Olympics, at least he can go into the sunset with that title and i believe with many2 more titles as you mentioned(most of them from European tournaments)..
I am not arguing I am adding information. I said the European Championship is the second greatest soccer tournament. Europe is more competitive overall than South America so the Euro Championships qualifies as the second best achievement after the World Cup. The only competitive team that comes from South America in the last half century or so are Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay hasn't done well in the World Cup for more than half a century. Since when is Colombia considered a soccer giant? Europe has Germany, France, England, Italy, Nederlands who are considered at the elite level not to mention Czech Republic, Russia, Turkey, Croatia, Greece etc. The Nederlands is considered a giant because of the players it produces such as Johann Cruyff, Marco Van Basten, Gullit etc. Also becoming runner-ups twice consecutively in 1974 and 1978 is an achievement in itself on top of the European Championships in 1988. Europe is the most competitive soccer continent in the world and they have more countries competing for the title of European Champion than ay other continent that is why they have qualifying rounds.
Yes fitness is very important to badminton of course, I didn't mean to say it wasn't . I think I said somewhere else though I believe it's up to the individual as to what makes a great player. We've all got different ideas. I personally don't see stamina as an important factor. Of course in the game itself you need to be fit, but I don't see it as a huge factor in greatness. I don't see myself remembering a player for their stamina. That's just me . It's obviously what people seem to be most interested in discussing though isn't it ?
Different people will have different criterias in judging who is a great player but the one that matters is the history books judgement. At the end of the day history will judge greatness by a player's resume, his achievements and how dominant that player was during his/her era. Records speak for themselves in the player's resume. It is a bonus if the player's record also has great technique, sportmanship, mental toughness, humility, friendly personality etc. John McEnroe was not a great sportsman and was a super brat but many if not most judge him to be a great player because of the other factors. Agassi is considered a great player because he won 8 Grand slam titles and one of the few players who has won all the Grand Slam events played on different surfaces. So it is no surprise if you consider Agassi to be a great player because many would disagree with you. It would be a point of dispute if you say Agassi is greater than Sampras. One could indeed say that because Agassi has won the French Open once when Sampras never won at Rolland Garros. However you are not saying Agassi is greater than Sampras so there is no argument here. Pete Sampras and Roger Federer are also considered the greats of tennis. The argument is in the contention of who is greater Agassi, Sampras or Federer. Although in the case of Federer the jury is still out because he has the potential to be the greatest ever if he keeps on the way he is going and breaks all the records.
True we are all individuals and we have different opinions as to who are great players but we must remember the majority rules and the historians or experts' opinions have more weight than the average individual opinion. The great players will no doubt be inducted into the badminton hall of fame so the ones who are not in the hall of fame are less regarded. Off course there is noone stopping you from having an opinion that Joe Bloggs is a great player even if the majority or the experts disagrees with you but where is the objectivity in that. So express your own opinion if you want but does your opinion hold any weight or is highly regarded by your peers? Do you think a good player can win tournaments if he wasn't fit or is low in stamina? Before you become great you must be good first. If to be a good player one has to be fit then it follows that great players must also be fit. Sure you might not remember a great player for his stamina but it is his fitness that wins him the titles. Could he have won many tournaments without being physically fit? So it is the effect of being fit that you remember that is being able to play a consistent match in 3 games at least once a day to win the match. All great players are physically fit that is why they can endure rubber games and still come out on top. Imagine what they would be like if they were not fit. A fit Taufik is great but a less than fit Taufik will not do very well. Mia Audina is another example. In terms of playing style and stroke variation she is a great player but she often loses in 3 games to the more superior phsyically fit players (especially the Chinese). If Mia was as fit as the Chinese women she would no doubt win many more titles and deserved to be called a great player and not just a very good player. At the elite level most if not all players are at the same techical prowess but it is fitness that determines who wins the tournaments. Taufik is a very good example. When he is well prepared he can defeat Lin Dan with ease. Remember the WC 05 when he beat Lin Dan in straight sets. When he is not prepared and hence not fit he loses to Lin Dan. So fitness/stamina might not be a HUGE factor but it is still an important factor. All things being equal it is fitness that makes a champion.
If we are judging the overall prestige of one tournament over another than we must not judge the tournament in question during a particular year but judge the tournament's prestige at every occasion. In judging that there are only a handful of players that can be categorised as potential winners and hold the tournament's prestige by their participation in the tournament you are neglecting the element of unpredictability in sport which often occurs. If we judge a tournament's prestige simply by looking at the participation of a select few which you consider potential winners then we are not being fair to all the other players. Who would have predicted Pullela Gopichand winning the All England 2001? What about Muhammad Hafiz Hashim winning All England 2003? The 17 year old Taufik making the finals in 1999? The 20 year old Icuk Sugiarto winning the 1983 WC? Ji XinPeng winning the 2000 Olympics? The 31 year old Poul Erik Hoyer Larsen winning All England and the Olympics? Fleming Delfs winning the 1977 WC? Camilla Martin winning the 1999 WC and the 2002 All England (by beating 4 Chinese players in a row)? Ronald Susilo beating Lin Dan in the 2004 Olympics? All those surprises seem to invalidate your argument that there are clear potential winners and their participation in a tournament makes the tournament prestigious. If your theory is valid than the most prestigious tournament would be a tournament where there are only a few invited best players in the world playing a round robin because they are the only ones that we can seriously see as potential winners. How competitive would people see that kind of tournament and how much prestige would you put on such a tournament? Like it or not having 64 main entries plus qualifying rounds is the most competitive tournament one can find because if one knows the stress of competition in badminton tournaments one would know that playing matches in a tournament setting is more stressful and competitive than a training match. The Olympics is considered a small scale tournament because it doesn't have qualifying rounds and 64 main entries so the competition is less stressful and hence less competitive irrespective of how many potential winners skip the Grand Prix/Super Series events. Plus you are forgetting that often the underdog wins the tournament as I listed in my examples. So you cannot assume some are potential winners and some are hopeless losers (although some obviously are hopeless losers! but not all).
Who are the "experts" then? To some people it does not matter so much if their opinion is not "highly regarded" by their pairs. An opinion is unique to the person. Whether anyone agrees with it or not is beside the point. As far as I'm concerned my opinions are my opinions, they're part of what make me, well... me. I don't aim to persuade everyone to agree with them. Not everything is facts and figures . I don't go and mathematically calulate why so and so player is great. All I know is that after seeing them play, following their achievements, etc. I've formed an opinion on them. I personally don't believe any opinion should be seen as "lesser" than another. Getting too technical about the whole thing is often counter productive. You're leaving too much to fact. There is a certain amount that you do have to leave to feeling. It's what makes people human. Using for instance statistics and such as fact ignores the important factor of luck. Judging a player by the tournaments they've won for example does not necessarily show how they have actually performed skill-wise. There have been numerous cases where I've thought the player that lost actually played better than the player that won. Obvious facts can't always be used as the single deciding factor. I guess getting back to the whole Olympics/WC thing, that's one thing you could use against the Olympics and I'm kind of contradicting myself there. I said that you have to be great to win the Olympics. After thinking about it more, I've decided that in most cases that would be true but like anything else, there can be the odd case that turns out slightly differently. I guess what I've just said sounds like a load of rubbish. I'm not very good with words sorry. I don't quite yet see why having 64 people in a tournament makes it more difficult? Sure there are upsets, but overall I would think a tournament including all the very top players would be more difficult than a tournament with only a few? If you're talking stamina, then I think a few very tough 3 set matches would be more physically taxing than 1 or 2 tough matches while breezing through the rest. Although I would like to ask you sabathiel what to you are the most prestigious tournaments (or rather, as we know that generally the OG/WC are accepted as being so, which do think would be the most deserving tournaments of such prestige in place of them)? There are already lots of KKK/TBH threads . Perhaps this one should be renamed, as most of the thread has already been taken up with this debate ?
Don't apologise with your ".....not very good with words sorry." It is a mouthful you have said here.
Being picky, I noticed a spelling mistake in my post also... I meant "peers" not "pairs". I was rushing too much . Can't edit it now... .
