Badminton: Asia continue to dominate

Badminton: Asia continue to dominate

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17th August 2008
Badminton crowned their women singles champion, Zhang Ning of China, as well as its men's doubles champions, mrňous Markis and Setiawan Hendra of Indonesia, Asia continues its domination of this relatively young Olympic sport.

Hoyer-Larsen out of their own
Since then introduced to the Olympic Games in 1992, only one gold medal already ended outside Asia, with Denmark at the Paul-Erik Hoyer-Larsen victory in the men's singles in Atlanta in 1996. The remaining 19 gold medals from these Games are divided among only three countries: China, South Korea and Indonesia, whose five Olympic gold medals have all come in badminton.

Gigantický shuttlecock
The first of these was Susi Susanti victory in Barcelona in 1992, and only two hours later, her snoubenec, Allan Lake Budi Kusuma, won the men's title. When Susanti and Kusuma returned to Indonesia in a solemn celebration included in the two-hour parade through the streets of Jakarta, which was led by auto, which has huge shuttlecock. Susanti returned to win the bronze medal four years later in Atlanta, in 1997 Susanti and Kusuma were married.

Model dedication
In the last two Olympic Games in Sydney and Athens, China was absolutely dominant in the women's singles and doubles, and mixed čtyřhra. The story of the 2004 champion Zhang Ning is a model of dedication: she left her home in Liaonong Province at the age of 12 to train full-time, and when she and her snoubenec their marriage license in 2001, delayed the ceremony for three years after Games in 2004, during which never spent more than two months along the stretch.

Childhood team-mates
Ge Fei and Gu Jun of Jiangsu Province began to play badminton together when they were nine years old. Twelve years later, ran through the field of the 1996 Olympics to win the women's doubles gold medal and four years later in Sydney did the same, only one admits more than seven points in the game. Ge, whose specialty was playing near the net, also won the World Cup in mixed doubles in 1997, when pairing with Liu Yong.
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