Dear Thomas, How would you rate you preparations this year? I noticed you were not able to play in the Thomas Cup qualifiers and pick up some more ranking points. In one of your threads, you mentioned about hoping to get enough points to qualify for the Olympics? Life is always tough and your current ranking is 23. Is the Olympics still the main aim for you, Peter and the Danish coaches this year? If so, are you planning to play in Japan and Korea?
Hi Cheung Thanks for the question, and sorry for the late respond but i´m pretty busy at the moment with practise and work etc... Well the goal were to qualify for the olympic but it wasn´t possible this time. That´s wy we didn´t play Japan and Korea. After Swiss Open and All england we realised that it was almost impossible to get to the top 16 because we only had 2 tournaments to get enough points. Lamp and Boe were selected for the Thomas Cup team so they we rated over us, so even if we managed to get to the top 16 the coaches would probally pick Lamp And Boe for the olympics. As it looks now Lamp and Boe wont go because they dropped down after Japan and Korea, i really feel sorry for them because they were so close to qualify. The plan for us now the next few month is hard hard training so we can be in top form for the next tournaments. My main focus the next 6 weeks is weighttraining and riding the bike so my physical shape can improve. The next tournament is Malaysia Open in june. Thomas
Olympic qualification Hi Thomas Just a question. Why didn't you play more tournament to be in the top 16? I think with your result you should be at this place after 13 or14 tournaments. If you look the top 16, all the pairs have more than 10 results. And you only 8, 10 with Japan and Korea. Very Difficult !!! It's a shame See you in Beijing 2008
Just a curious question Thomas. Do you players in the national team actually work? Or do you only concentrate on training only?
Hi Zhao Well i agree on your comment, its not good enough to only play 9 tournaments if we expect to qualify for the olympics. The reason is that we have a very tight budget and when Japan and Korea came up, our chance for qualification was so little we chose to withdraw from them and save our money for next years tournaments where the goal is qualification for the World Champs. We also missed German Open because of an injury so that would have put us up to 12 tournaments and that would maybe have been enough. Hopefully next yaer we will play more tournamnets to qualify for the World Champs, we will see... Hi Flint Some of the players have there education and others work when the got the time. I for exsample if focus a 100 % on my badminton and then i have some small jobs on the side to earn some extra money for tournaments. But i think everybody has something to do other than play badminton, whether it is education or jobs. Thomas
