World Badminton

Outside the arena for the Hong Kong Open Badminton.   Never thought I would have a chance to see the top players in the world, only a 10 minute taxi ride from my home.

The arena was much like a smaller hockey rink in Canada where they just used one end.

Yonex had a big display of merchandise for sale, you could hardly walk down the aisles.

Yonex racquet.

Kylie, I and three other teachers from the school went to watch.  Because it was in a larger venue tickets were much more available than they were last year when it was in a smaller arena.

The merchandise building

In the waiting area outside the arena.

                          Kylie purchased the tickets and we had an excellent view of the games.

A lot of pregame ceremony and show with dancing dragons

I don't know how this crew got in the show. They were a bunch of middle aged ladies who looked like they had had one practice in the parking lot before the show.  I'm sure we could have thrown something together with some students and done just as well.  It was good for a laugh though.

Because this is an Olympic year the best teams in the world were here.  This was the mixed final between Denmark and China.  Denmark seems to be the only Caucasians among the top players.  China won in 3 games.

Medal presentations for mixed doubles.

You get some idea of the seating arrangement in the arena.

This was the player we all wanted to see, Lin Dan(In the yellow shoes).  He is the defending world and Olympic champion, and one of the Danish players just recently called him the greatest player of all time.

Lin Dan was playing another Chinese player in the final.  He won easily, and seems to have another gear when he needs it.  Hard to imagine how good he must be when he makes other top world players look ordinary.

He is treated like a god in China.

Kylie and two others from our school.

This was the ladies doubles final, again both Chinese.  The Chinese are now dominating in badminton.  When the boys were playing there were a lot of Indonesian, Malaysians, and Filipinos.  China dominates 
in many of the sports now.  With the amount of people here to choose from l guess it's not
hard to find good athletes!

By far the most exciting match was the men's doubles between Korea and China, again won by China.  They won all 5 finals.  The Koreans are in the pink shirts.

The smashes and returns you have to see to believe, and even then it is hard to believe at times.

Incredible returns!

The Koreans changed shirts to the purple, put up a valiant effort but couldn't  pull out a win.  It will be exciting to watch many of these players in the London Olympics this summer.