Li Yongbo, head coach of Chinese badminton team, wrote in his blog to claim to the world that Chinese team is not a so-called dream team. I translate his words below:
We met some difficulties in preparing for the OG 2008. Although we got three gold medals in the world championship this year and defended the Sudirman cup, many problems are occurred in the players and more beyond that. I summarize four points in the following:
1. A lot of powerful enterprises will sponsor OG and each country taking part in it will spend enough time and money on it. Thus a great many excellent players are attracted to come to Beijing. Accordingly, there will be even harder battles than before.
We met some difficulties in preparing for the OG 2008. Although we got three gold medals in the world championship this year and defended the Sudirman cup, many problems are occurred in the players and more beyond that. I summarize four points in the following:
1. A lot of powerful enterprises will sponsor OG and each country taking part in it will spend enough time and money on it. Thus a great many excellent players are attracted to come to Beijing. Accordingly, there will be even harder battles than before.
2. We ourselves faced great challenge from public expectation. Beijing Olympic Games, for China, is a home event and no opportunity is better than it. On the other side, it is more of challenge than the chance. Players have to win without other choice. They are under high pressure. Due to the replacement from old players to new ones and injury, system training is hard to accomplish.
3. There is not much of advantage for China adopting the new 21-point system. It makes all the badders in the same starting line. In order to adapt China to it in as less time as possible, a specialist team is set up and more scientific researchers are brought to us. We hope that the secrets of 21-point could be known ASAP to give more guidance to the shuttlers.
4. We are obliged to change traditional training proposal which is more helpful with the combination of match and exercise. To gain more credits, to get the full 3 tickets for OG, players have to play more tournaments than ever. This affects their forms, even more injuries followed.
The 4 problems above should be overcome before next summer.
High expectation means high pressure. Nowadays, some people regard badminton as China's diving and table tennis and call them dream teams. Badminton is China’s traditional prevailing sports. Of course I am proud of and have confidence in it.
But as for dream team, I have to say we just make a dream at night to score titles. Instead of tens of gold medals for some kinds of sports in OG, there are only 5 for badminton. I wish badminton fans and media give more space to shuttlers for too high pressure surely has a deeply bad influence on the badminton national team. If so, better performance will be shown to you.
In my opinion, the four are the common problems for each country involving in badminton to face. But for China, 21-point system reduces its advantage to other countries. His call for lowering the expectation is reasonable, but will be useless in the end. No one can stop the strongest willing to win in the hometown especially in the dominance field.
Competitive sports is just like this.
There must be many head coaches in other countries preparing for OG 2008. What are they doing and thinking? Do you have some suggestion to them? Comment on this issue.
