this is a translation of an exerpt from an interview with the Chinese head coach Li YongBo: Q : China's men's doubles is always the weak event, why's that? LiYB: most ppl aren't familiar with the history of China's badminton development. we've raised and re-examined this question many times. this is a result of the overall systematic training in the team. the ladies team, we have always been strong, there was never a problem with upcoming talents in the team. in the men's team, in the past players like me and Tian BingYi started off and strong singles players, for one reason or another, we dropped playing singles and started playing doubles. at that time, the difference in skill between singles and doubles isn't very different, as a result it is easy to adapt between the two. however, modern time, especially in the past 10 years, the evolution of badminton caused the doubles and singles event to be two completely different events in terms of skills and strategy, China's training system is based on singles, from selection of talents to training, we focused on singles. we've never deliberately form doubles training methods. all players start playing doubles if they fail to play singles. as a result, we never excel in men's doubles. in the past 3-4 yrs we started to change the training process, we request all provinces to start developing doubles specific players, we set out rule to not allow a player to play both event in all local and national competitions, now our doubles are starting to show some promise. progress of players like Fu and Cai is very apparent, Cai was actually an excellent singles player, he too switched from singles to doubles.
i translated and posted this because i think this provides amazing insight into the training in the Chinese team as well as why China has not exceled in MD. other countries like Indonesia and Korea players are more specialized. and i think China's realization of that fact will soon create more and more double specialists. i also remember some other Chinese pro mentioned that only single dropouts plays doubles, but i cannot remember who. perhaps that mentality should start chaning now.
If Li is telling the truth then China did not change anything in the last 20 years regarding doubles. One aspect I learned from some players the reason they do not choose to play doubles is because the prize money is less than in singles.
LOL Great point Viver! Now imagine, if they started to win in all events?? That would start raking in even more dough My... it appears, somethings never change