Sports

Well-Placed Winners

• Byline:PAT GAO
• Publication Date:07/01/2011

The local women’s doubles team of Cheng Wen-hsing, front, and Chien Yu-chin was ranked No. 1 in the world in April this year. (Photo Courtesy of Chinese Taipei Badminton Association)

Taiwan is gaining an increasingly prominent position in the international badminton arena.

If one were to query the proverbial man or woman on the street about which sport was Taiwan’s national pastime, most respondents would say baseball. And they would have a point, as Taiwan has a long baseball history and significant results at all levels of international competition, while games between teams in Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League claim a huge television audience nationwide.

An equally strong case can be made for badminton, however, as people can be seen playing or practicing the sport in Taiwan almost anywhere there is an open space. “Those who actually play baseball account for less than 1 percent of the entire population,” says Tsai Hung-peng , secretary-general of Taiwan’s national badminton organization, the Chinese Taipei Badminton Association (CTBA), which was formed in 1973. In contrast, the CTBA estimates that around 2 million Taiwanese—or close to 9 percent of the population—play badminton regularly.

Taiwan also has no shortage of highly ranked badminton players, although a lack of competition media coverage means that their names are unfamiliar to many of their compatriots. In the first-ever World Nations Rankings released by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) in December 2010, for example, Taiwan claimed eighth place among the world’s badminton powers. The BWF is the sport’s international governing body and is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur.

The high rankings for local players have continued this year. As of the end of April, for example, Taiwan’s athletes appeared in the BWF top-10 lists for women’s doubles, men’s doubles, mixed doubles and women’s singles. Most notably, the end of that month saw women’s doubles pair Cheng Wen-hsing and Chien Yu-chin ranked first in the world. Meanwhile, high school student Tai Tsu-ying held down a place in the BWF women’s singles top-20 rankings that month, while Cheng Shao-chieh became the first player from Taiwan to break into the BWF women’s singles top-10 rankings after taking third place at this year’s Badminton Asia Championships held in April in Chengdu City, mainland China. Men’s doubles players Lee Sheng-mu and Fang Chieh-min also held a top-10 place in the BWF rankings.

Cheng Shao-chieh, the first badminton player from Taiwan to break into the world top-10 women’s singles rankings (Photo Courtesy of Chinese Taipei adminton Association)

Of Taiwan’s highly ranked women’s pair, Cheng Wen-hsing is now a lecturer in the sports department at National Chung Cheng University in southern Taiwan’s Chiayi County, while Chien teaches at her alma mater, Kaohsiung Senior High School, which is located in the port city in southern Taiwan.

Chien Yu-chin achieved success in badminton while she was a senior high student, and now teaches teenage star Tai Tsu-ying, who is a student at Kaohsiung Senior High School. Cheng Shao-chieh was also a senior high school student when she was selected for a spot on Taiwan’s national badminton team for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where she reached the quarterfinals. In fact, Liao Kuo-mao , head coach of Taiwan’s national badminton team for international competitions, argues that Cheng Shao-chieh’s performance at the Olympics and her bronze medal in the women’s singles at the World Championships in 2005 were indicators that Taiwan was on its way to becoming a major power in world badminton. “Cheng’s success opened a new era for Taiwanese badminton players,” Liao says.

Wu Jun-yan is a director on the board of the Taiwan Senior Badminton Association (TSBA), which was established in 1998 to promote the sport as a health or leisure activity. In 2009, Wu served as the CTBA’s vice president and then became the first person from Taiwan to be elected as one of BWF Council’s 17 international members. “The reasons for Taiwan’s bigger international presence in badminton are the decades of work to popularize the sport in local schools and communities and an increased emphasis on training professional players,” Wu says.

A passion for badminton runs deep in Wu Jun-yan’s family, as his father Wu Wen-ta served as CTBA president and also joined 11 other successful businesspersons and badminton enthusiasts in 1972 to form the Taipei Renai Badminton Management Committee. The committee became a pioneering force in promoting the sport at the grassroots level and was the major force behind the development of a multitude of badminton courts on the southwest slopes of Yuanshan, a mountain behind the majestic Grand Hotel in Taipei City. There are now more than 200 courts on Yuanshan.

Mixed three-person teams of seniors compete in this year’s Morning Cup in Taipei. (Photo Courtesy of Taiwan Senior Badminton Association)

In 1972, the Renai group founded the Morning Cup, a series of matches in which players competed between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. on weekdays before going to work. Within a few years after the cup was founded, the number of players had grown too large to continue holding matches on weekday mornings, so the competition was shifted to weekends. The Morning Cup has held onto its name, but matches now extend into the evening hours. In January this year, BWF president Kang Young Joong of South Korea traveled to Taiwan to present Wu Wen-ta with a lifetime achievement award in recognition of his dedication to promoting badminton and offering a great variety of events to players. “It is a great testimony to the combined efforts of all parties, especially the Wu family, and in particular Mr. Wu Wen-ta, for their passion and dedication in nurturing and building this tournament into what it is today,” Kang wrote in an introductory message in the guide for this year’s Morning Cup.

Organizers began inviting international players to compete in the cup in 1985 and the event has continued to expand its scale since then. In 1999, Wu Jun-yan’s TSBA took over the duties of his father’s Renai group, including its role as organizer of the Morning Cup. The next notable development came in 2006, when the cup started a bracket for mixed teams for seniors of three players instead of the normal two players, a format that continues today. Male competitors on those teams must be more than 65 years old, while women must be more than 60 years old. The three-player format was launched to enable older players to enjoy the game while minimizing the risk of injury that comes from trying to cover the entire area of the court with just two players. Many of the three-person teams position two older players in the front, with one who is “younger”—but still above the cutoff age—at the back. “My father invented the game for senior badminton enthusiasts,” Wu Jun-yan says. “And now other countries such as Japan are showing an interest in trying it.”

In 2010, Victor Rackets Industrial Corp., the leading shuttlecock and racket manufacturer in Taiwan and a major presence in the worldwide market, began to fund the Morning Cup competitions. “Their sponsorship has been a very significant and positive development for the competition,” Wu Jun-yan says.

One of the more than 200 badminton courts on the slopes of Yuanshan in Taipei (Photo Courtesy of Taiwan Senior Badminton Association)

Victor began making shuttlecocks in the late 1960s and rackets in the 1970s. Local manufacturing made the products more affordable, thus promoting the sport’s development by encouraging more people to give it a try. In addition to supporting amateur badminton competitions such as the Morning Cup, Victor also sponsors domestic and foreign professional matches, teams and star players like Cheng Wen-hsing.

In January this year, the Morning Cup obtained recognition as a BWF-sanctioned event for the first time. In April this year, the perennial competition celebrated its 40th anniversary in Taipei. “It’s Taiwan’s longest uninterrupted sporting event organized by the private sector,” Wu Jun-yan says. This year’s matches drew a record of about 2,700 players from 13 countries who competed in 21 age groups, including one for those above 85 years old and another that paired grandparents and their grandchildren. The youngest participant this year was 9 years old, while the oldest was a remarkable 91.

International Image

In 2012, the Morning Cup will see its string of 40 consecutive years in Taipei broken, however, as the competition will take place in Malaysia. That move is likely to be only a temporary one made in order to promote the competition overseas, though, as Wu Jun-yan says his group will bring the matches back to Taiwan. “We’re taking the Morning Cup to Malaysia to expand its international image,” he says. “After it returns to Taiwan, hopefully that will attract more international players.”

Highly ranked men’s doubles pair Lee Sheng-mu, left, and Fang Chieh-min (Photo Courtesy of Chinese Taipei Badminton Association)

Many other badminton competitions besides the Morning Cup take place in Taiwan, of course. In 2010, for example, the World University Badminton Championship was held in Taipei, while the Kaohsiung International Challenge was held in its namesake southern city later that year. And this year, the BWF World Junior Championships will take place in Taipei from October 28 to November 6.

At the top level, badminton is promoted in Taiwan by associations like the CTBA and TSBA. A surprising impetus for the sport’s development, however, comes from players’ clubs. In 1976, the government-backed Land Bank of Taiwan formed its own club, while the Taiwan Power Co. and Taiwan Cooperative Bank, two other state-owned enterprises, created clubs in the 1970s and early 1990s respectively. Those clubs were joined in 2009 by one organized by Wan Hai Lines Ltd., a privately owned provider of worldwide container vessel shipping services. Wan Hai’s players have since taken top places in major competitions, including the National Ranking Games held twice each year by the CTBA. The Wan Hai club is based in Kaohsiung, providing a southern counterpart to the three older badminton clubs based in Taipei in the north.

The company clubs offer extensive training and coaching for players. As a result, some of Taiwan’s top competitors and coaches have emerged from club ranks. Coach Liao Kuo-mao, for example, has been a member of Taiwan Cooperative Bank’s club since 1992. An unusual aspect of playing for the clubs is that they offer a career path for standout performers. After joining the club and advancing through the ranks, Liao was offered a position as a bank employee. His job at that point, however, was hitting shuttlecocks, not counting dollars. He then began receiving training in banking operations and now holds a position in the bank’s accounting department. “Many professional badminton players become bank workers, Taiwan Power staffers or sports teachers at schools,” Liao says.

Another example of the unusual badminton-to-banking career path is Hsieh Yu-hsin, who reached the quarterfinals for men’s singles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics games. In 2004, Hsieh became a member of the Land Bank of Taiwan club, and, like Liao, became a professional badminton player. Hsieh is now in a banking operations training program.

Specialized Training

Members of Taiwan’s national badminton team practice at the National Sports Training Center in Kaohsiung. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

The four big badminton clubs also assist in the sport’s development by forming relationships with schools that offer specialized training in the sport. Wan Hai’s club, for example, sponsors sports classes at Kaohsiung Senior High School, which is also Hsieh Yu-hsin’s alma mater. Sports classes have been formed at hundreds of elementary and high schools around Taiwan as part of the government’s effort to establish regional systems for identifying and developing athletically talented youths. Under that program, the Ministry of Education’s Department of Physical Education has targeted badminton for development, along with other Olympic sports such as archery, gymnastics, swimming and tennis.

Liao points out that a significant factor behind the international competitiveness of Taiwan’s badminton players and other athletes in recent years has been the maturation of a system designed to admit promising student athletes to high schools and universities. The athletes must meet certain academic criteria but are allowed to use outstanding results in major competitions—mainly the annual National High School Athletic Games, as well as international competitions such as the BWF World Junior Championships—to gain admission to schools all the way up to the graduate level. Doubles standout Cheng Wen-hsing was able to use her badminton results to gain university admission, for example, and now holds a master’s degree in sports and leisure education from National Chung Cheng University. With an admission path to educational institutions that now values athletic achievement, Taiwanese parents are more willing to let their children pursue sports careers than before. “That means young student athletes have a much easier path today than in previous years,” Liao says.

A student receives instruction from a badminton coach at an elementary school in Taipei. (Photo by Chang Su-ching)

The best of those student athletes end up being coached by Liao, who is responsible for training Taiwan’s national badminton team at the National Sports Training Center in Kaohsiung. Many of the players are preparing for a succession of international competitions running through April 2012, and the results of those competitions will determine which players qualify for the Chinese Taipei team at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. “Taiwan’s competitiveness in badminton has improved a lot because there are more foreign coaches at Taiwan’s top badminton clubs,” Liao says. “Local players are also getting more exposure to international competition and receiving better support.”

Badminton is a sport that relies on reflexes, agility, speed and intelligence much more than size or power, which means that it plays to the strengths of Asian competitors. In the year-end BWF World Nations Rankings for 2010, for example, Asian countries claimed eight of the top 10 places. As Chien Yu-chin points out, “Taiwan’s players are quite nimble and smart.” That athletic ability, combined with the continued development of systems for supporting badminton talent, means that there is good reason to believe that Taiwan will claim more spots atop international podiums in the future.

Write to Pat Gao at kotsijin@gmail.com