Swifter Higher: 30 Sports in 30 Days: Badminton

30 Sports in 30 Days: Badminton

A scene from the 1988 badminton exhibition at Seoul.

It may seem the poorer, stranger yet slightly amusing stepchild of tennis, but the truth is that this is the daddy of all racquet sports. Badminton is as Olympic as a sport can be without being Olympic -- the Greeks were playing a version of shuttlecock in the days of the ancient Games, but it never quite made it onto the program.

The game made its way east to the Orient, and west to medieval England. An early European competitive version of the sport involved hitting the ball back and forth between two people, counting the number of hits before the ball hit the ground. When and where the ball grew feathers is still unclear.

In England, "battledore and shuttlecock" became all the rage for the rich, high-class status was reflected in the permanent name the sport was eventually given. In the 1850's and 1860's, the Duke of Beaufort's Badminton House hosted popular exhibitions. The modern rules developed as an amalgam of proper Englishness and a game called "Poona" picked up in India by colonial British soldiers. Later on, the first All England Championships was held in 1899.

It took a while, but the East to take the game back from the West. Athletes from Great Britain were front and center at the All England Championships for a half-century, but Malaysians Wong Peng Soon and Eddy B. Choong rattled off a string of men's championships in the 1950's. Denmark, the United States and Indonesia also made strong showings, and badminton became a sport for the entire world again.

After two millennia of basic existence, the game's lineage finally led to the Olympics at Munich 1972, but as a demonstration sport. The competitions were held in the volleyball venue on an off day, and only 3,970 of the over 10,000 tickets printed for the September 4 were sold. The sport's bid for worldwide attention, as well as the entire Olympics, were tragically overshadowed hours later when the infamous hostage crisis in the athlete's village began.

Unlike the other demonstration at Munich (water skiing), badminton eventually made it to the official Olympic menu. After an unsuccessful attempt to get into Seoul 1988 as a medal event, the IOC invited the sport's federation onto the program for Barcelona 1992. For Seoul, badminton was given a status just beneath demonstration: exhibition. The other 1988 exhibition sport, bowling, is still trying to achieve full Olympic status.

Unlike the friendly bat-game of accumulated points, today's badminton -- dominated by Asian countries -- is fast and furious, with projectile speeds approaching 150 miles per hour. Top competitors make use of goose-feather shuttlecocks tipped with cork and rubber, and each one is made from 16 feathers from the same animal. Racquets are exceedingly light, weighing just 3.5 ounces.

The point of the game is to have the shuttlecock drop into the opponent's area without a return of service. Scoring in badminton is similar to that of beach volleyball: points can only be accumulated by the server. Games end when one side has accumulated 15 points (11 for women's singles), and matches are best two out of three.

Badminton Fun Facts:

Since 1996, the Olympic tournaments have been organized by blind draw, held just days before the Games. As the sport has become a television phenomenon in Asia, television broadcasters pressured the Badminton World Federation to move the draw announcement up two weeks to July 26. Why? So they could televise it, of course.
Kim Dong-Moon and Ha Tae-Kwon of South Korea swept through the men's doubles at Athens 2004, not losing a single game on the way to the Olympic championship. Here are the clinching points as they dominated countrymen Lee Dong-Soo and Yoo Yong-Sung in the gold medal final.
Some casual sports fans need dominant personalities to get them hooked into a sport, and badminton is happy to provide. Lin "Super Dan" Dan of China, the world's No. 1 player, is known for a quick temper and healthy ego (he wears an oversized t-shirt with a giant picture of his own face on it), and he's dating the world's No. 1 women's player, Xie Xingfang.

In 2008:

The badminton tournaments will take place over the first nine days of competition, August 9 through 17. There will be five events in total: singles and doubles for both genders, and mixed doubles.

Singles competitions will occur in a single-elimination format with 64 entries each, while the doubles events will begin with rounds of 16. The first badminton medals will be awarded on August 15 (Day 7) with the women's doubles; the women's singles and men's doubles will be decided the next day, and the men's singles and mixed doubles will close badminton on August 17 (Day 9).

The BWF has approved 170 athletes for the Beijing Olympics, and a record 50 nations will participate. Countries can submit up to three entries for each event, but singles and pairs must have accumulated enough points in BWF competitions in 2007 and 2008.

Only host nation China has three entries in men's and women's singles, as well as in women's doubles -- and therefore are eligible to sweep the medals. This has happened once before, when China took gold, silver and bronze in the women's doubles competition at Sydney 2000.

All-Time Medal Standings: