1 against 3

It seemed that Lee Chong Wei was still haunted by the defeat to Lin Dan in the World Championships and he was visibly not himself and lacking his usual supremacy and confident playing against another Chinese player Chen Long in the final of Japan Open. It was already a disappointment not seeing a re-match between Chong Wei and Lin Dan as the later conceded a walk-over to his younger compatriot, Chen Long in the semifinal. The fact is that China has 3 excellent players namely Lin Dan, Chen Jin and Chen Long that are capable of winning tournaments, and as such their head coach could put up some un-sportsman tricks to manipulate the outcome.

This is not the first time Lin Dan conceded a walkover to his compatriots in helping them to gain more tournament points for qualifying into next year Olympics. But there is nothing the rest of the world can do about it. They have the most number of competitive badminton players, men and women alike, and with the aging of Peter-Gade, Taufik and Lee Chow Wei and the budding new players around the world are in no way close to the Chinese, we can expect the Chinese players continue with the walkover trick to favor the best chance of winning or to help up the players to score more qualifying points. Fair or not fair, that’s not the issue as the winner takes it all. We can say that the defeat of Chow Wei wasn’t fair as his opponent Chen Long had a rest day courtesy of his compatriot Lin Dan conceded a walkover to him in the semifinal. But whatever tricks your opponents play, the winner is a winner and likewise a loser is a loser.

Despite his defeat to Chen Long, Chong Wei could still walk tall as he is the most consistent player this season, successfully reaching all the finals in the nine tournaments he participated this year. But he has to quickly get out of the blue of losing to Lin Dan in the World Championships as without the confident, he simply could not bring out the best of his game and Olympics is just not far away.

李宗伟，加油！