Posted: Monday 30 January 2012
Olympic countdown - No 3 Badminton
Battledore and Shuttlecock
The world’s fastest racquet sport has its roots in a variety of different games.
The ancient Chinese are said to have played a game called Ti Zian Ji in around 500BC, in which the aim of the game was to keep the shuttle from hitting the ground without using your hand. Centuries later, a variation on this game called “battledore and shuttlecock” was played regularly by children in England. In this game, players used battledores (paddles) to hit a small feathered cork (shuttlecock) back and forward to each other, trying to keep it in the air for as long as they possibly could.
During the mid 19th century, British army officers stationed in India encountered the sport of “poona”, a much faster paced and more competitive version of “battledore and shuttlecock”. The officers clearly enjoyed playing “poona” as they decided to bring the sport and its rules back to the UK.
So why is the sport now called “badminton”?
Well, the Duke of Beaufort was said to be a big fan of “poona” and in around 1873, he hosted a lawn party within the grounds of his stately home, Badminton House in Gloucestershire, where guests played what they referred to as “the game of badminton”. As the sport grew in popularity, Bath Badminton Club was established and the rules that form the basis of today’s game were drawn up.
Badminton at the Olympics
Badminton made its Olympic debut as a demonstration event in the 1972 Munich Olympics, however it was not until the 1992 Barcelona Olympics that it officially became an Olympic sport.
Given the sports popularity in Asia, it will not surprise readers to know that 23 out of the 24 gold medals awarded in badminton have gone to athletes from either China, South Korea or Indonesia with the solitary European gold medal having been won by Denmark’s Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Great Britain have had some success in the mixed doubles event in recent years winning bronze in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and silver in the 2004 Athens Olympics. Hopes for a British gold medal in London 2012 may rest on mixed doubles pair Chris Adcock and Imogen Bankier who won silver at last year’s World Championships.
Skirting the issue
Badminton made the news for all the wrong reasons in May of last year when the world governing body, the Badminton World Federation (BWF), published plans to make the sport more attractive and marketable to spectators by implementing a new dress code which would require female players to wear skirts on court in major tournaments (although for cultural and religious reasons, players would be allowed to wear shorts or long pants so long as they were worn under a skirt).
The plans were met with widespread criticism with some female players even suggesting that imposing such a mandatory rule would be a breach of their human rights. Perhaps not surprisingly, within a matter of weeks of announcing its plans, the BWF made a further announcement that further study on clothing would be needed before any changes were made to the regulations.
It will be interesting to see whether the BWF revisit the issue in the next couple of years. Clearly badminton is no different from any other sport in that it needs sponsorship and tv revenue to survive and many members of the BWF must be somewhat envious of the commercial success which tennis has enjoyed over the last decade.
However, one must question whether forcing female players to wear skirts is really the answer.
