Zhang Ning will have a hard fight over her former patriot Zhou Mi for a spot in the semi-finals of Denmark Open. As I mentioned in Badminton Denmark Open: Zhang Ning and Xie Xingfang's Different Emotions, Zhang has not recovered from his lap injury occurred in Good Luck Beijing badminton event, which seriously affected her performance in the first 2 rounds. She experienced a lot of problems beating Sara Persson of Sweden in the first round, then Kaori Mori in the second, showing she’s quite far from her peak form. The Olympic champion should have beaten them in straight games if in her best mode.
So I suppose that Zhang would lose the game. After the publication of the latest world rank, Zhou Mi is in the No.17. She is eager to get a win over Zhang to promote herself to a high position. Zhou has won 2004 Olympic bronze medal and she is aiming to enter 2008 Beijing OG. ##CONTINUE##She has enough power to kick off any other players in the badminton world including Zhang Ning.
Let’s talk more about Zhou Mi(photo).
After retiring from Chinese national badminton team, Zhou Mi chose Hong Kong as her second hometown to go on her badminton career. She benefited from the proposal called “Quality Migrant Admission Scheme” by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. She was accepted for having brilliant scores including former Asian Games champion and former world No.1, following Wang Chen to represent Hong Kong badminton team. Thus Hong Kong has more power to challenge Chinese national team, which Li Yongbo does not expect to face.
In the former national player Gong Ruina’s eyes, it is also good to China that more powerful opponents result in higher level in badminton techniques.
In China, a national player’s transforming to other places always related the topic called patriotism. To avoid this, Hong Kong is the best choice for Zhou Mi for HK belongs to China.
Hong Kong is a better place for Zhou Mi to play badminton
As we all knew, there are so many excellent badminton players in Chinese national team that any of them could be the world champion. The competition is so hard that a few of them fail to represent China in the world badminton court. But Hong Kong is not the case. No one could threaten her center position.
A loose environment could help her make better achievements. Wang Chen is an example. I have to say that Wang was not the first-class player in national badminton team. After going to Hong Kong, Wang Chen beat the top player such as Xie Xingfang, Zhang Ning many times and became one of the hardest opponents to Chinese team.
Zhou was very satisfied with the change. She could enjoy badminton most rather than playing for better scores before.
Another factor is that Zhou’s injuries could be cured in HK. She was forced to quit national team because of her injuries.
To the question whether she could enter Beijing OG, she said that the first step for her was to win enough credits to qualify for it.
