This year, for the first time US is hosting the Badminton World Championship. So when Qing told me this, I found there’s no excuse not to move my butt over there to take a look – I’m so glad I did!
The IBF’05 Championship is hosted in Anaheim stadium – a great facility meticulously adapted to the badminton events. For example, all the entrance hang heavy double wool curtain to prevent unwanted draft from entering the center court. Then of course there’re lots of police cars and security checks, the usual American hospitality.
Badminton is very popular in California, even then, it is nothing like football or basketball. So my friends and I can still enjoy the luxury of strolling to the venue half an hour earlier and get the best seats for only $40 a piece. Those are nice seats, only about 10 meters from the court!
The afternoon events are 5 semifinal games in Men’s single, Woman’s single and Mixed double. All are really great games. The last event, the semifinal between Lin Dan of China and Peter Gade of Denmark is the pinacle of the afternoon. I’ve never seem such unity of Chinese people in US, supporting the Chinese team. It’s a very well played and well balanced game, with Lin Dan’s familiar power-play style and Peter Gade’s surprising net-play finess and overall tenacity. The game lasted three sets and more than two hours, with the whole stadium boiling through-out all three sets. In another semi-final, Taufik of Indonesia beat Li Chong Wei of Malasia with his superb control and smoothness, despite my cheering for the young Malai player.
On the way out, I took a picture with some members of the Chinese team (Fu Haifeng and Sang Yang):
This is a much more enjoyable semifinal event than the final round on Sunday. I am glad you did’t watch Lin’s loss to Taufik. Almost pitiful.
I agree. I’m so glad I picked the perfect day to go. The weather is great, and the seats are great. Sunday would be triply painful – both Chinese team lost to foreign competition, and would have paid much higher ticket price.