so here is the story of my highlight during the Sudirman Cup.
the Cup was held in a really big sports hall. while i am sure during the earlier matches, the full hall was used for badminton, during the finals, only half the hall was used to hold the one single competition court. the other half of the gym has around 8 badminton courts plus one warmup court with Yonex mats.
the regular courts usually have some badminton training going on. whereas the warmup court is for the players to warm up.
Janet has some foresight and said that we should bring our rackets into the hall with us, may be we can get to hit some round during intermissions. (surely, the badminton bug will bite, as it always does...)
so we went there a few times, the first time we Lee Dong Soo and Yoo Yong Sung hitting some drives in the warmup court, too bad, some kids were next to them playing. so we had to resort to the court next to them. which is still pretty cool, i played in the same hall as the Olympic silver medalists!
the next time we went, Zhang Jun and Gao Ling. again, some other kids were next to them. and in just a few minutes, they were gone.
during the MD match between Denmark and Korea, we again went off to hit a few shots. there we saw Rikke Olsen hitting around with Ann Lou Jorgensen. next to them was Kim Dong Moon practicing Lee Kyeung Won. i went up to them and asked if i can take some pictures of them. well, ok, more like sign language as i don't think they know what i was saying. so i did.
during their practice, i saw them stopped a few times and stared at Rikke/Ann Lou's practice. since they will be Lee's potential opponent, they were probably looking at their forms.
after may be 5-10 or so, Lee stopped practicing a shouted across the hall, then i noticed that Ra was sitting on the floor on the other side watching the match via a live video feed into a TV. despite Lee's call, Ra wasn't interested in doing any practice but instead she was interested in watching the MD match. Lee ran off to talk to Ra and she herself ended up watching the match too!
So there was Kim Dong Moon, got left standing there alone in the practice court. I was about to leave when a ingenious idea came to Kwun’s mind….. how about… how about… asked if I can hit a few shots with him?!? So I took my racket (I was planning to go play, remember? So I have my rackets handy) and asked him and he kindly said yes. I played around 5 mins one-on-one with Kim Dong Moon! Throughout the play, Kim wasn’t even trying, after all, he didn’t need to and apparently looked a little bit bored. I don’t blame him as I wasn’t of much of a competition anyways... but FYI, i did managed to win a couple of rallies off him.
so there i was, playing with the best mixed doubles player in the world. i can still feel the excitement up till today........
the Cup was held in a really big sports hall. while i am sure during the earlier matches, the full hall was used for badminton, during the finals, only half the hall was used to hold the one single competition court. the other half of the gym has around 8 badminton courts plus one warmup court with Yonex mats.
the regular courts usually have some badminton training going on. whereas the warmup court is for the players to warm up.
Janet has some foresight and said that we should bring our rackets into the hall with us, may be we can get to hit some round during intermissions. (surely, the badminton bug will bite, as it always does...)
so we went there a few times, the first time we Lee Dong Soo and Yoo Yong Sung hitting some drives in the warmup court, too bad, some kids were next to them playing. so we had to resort to the court next to them. which is still pretty cool, i played in the same hall as the Olympic silver medalists!
the next time we went, Zhang Jun and Gao Ling. again, some other kids were next to them. and in just a few minutes, they were gone.
during the MD match between Denmark and Korea, we again went off to hit a few shots. there we saw Rikke Olsen hitting around with Ann Lou Jorgensen. next to them was Kim Dong Moon practicing Lee Kyeung Won. i went up to them and asked if i can take some pictures of them. well, ok, more like sign language as i don't think they know what i was saying. so i did.
during their practice, i saw them stopped a few times and stared at Rikke/Ann Lou's practice. since they will be Lee's potential opponent, they were probably looking at their forms.
after may be 5-10 or so, Lee stopped practicing a shouted across the hall, then i noticed that Ra was sitting on the floor on the other side watching the match via a live video feed into a TV. despite Lee's call, Ra wasn't interested in doing any practice but instead she was interested in watching the MD match. Lee ran off to talk to Ra and she herself ended up watching the match too!
So there was Kim Dong Moon, got left standing there alone in the practice court. I was about to leave when a ingenious idea came to Kwun’s mind….. how about… how about… asked if I can hit a few shots with him?!? So I took my racket (I was planning to go play, remember? So I have my rackets handy) and asked him and he kindly said yes. I played around 5 mins one-on-one with Kim Dong Moon! Throughout the play, Kim wasn’t even trying, after all, he didn’t need to and apparently looked a little bit bored. I don’t blame him as I wasn’t of much of a competition anyways... but FYI, i did managed to win a couple of rallies off him.
so there i was, playing with the best mixed doubles player in the world. i can still feel the excitement up till today........
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