Canberra Times Article on Olympic Badminton Canberra Times Thursday 5th August 2004, page 31, - Olympic Round up. "Badminton China, who have their sights set on an Olympic Games badminton gold medal clean-sweep, are so confident of victory that they can afford to leave world champion Xia Xuanze sitting at home. the Sydney Olympic bronze medal winner and 2003 world champion has suffered such a drastic slump in form that he wasn't considered good enough for the team and has been replaced by Chen Hong. China won four of the five golds in Sydney 2000 with Ji Xinpeng taking the men's title, Gong Zichao the women's, Ge Fei and Gu Jun winning the women's doubles and Zhang Jun and Gao Ling, the mixed"
This is rather stale news to us badminton fans. Nothing too exciting like what Eva has reported on the change of Indonesia's training programme with Icuk at the helm. Makes us wonder how interested and updated Canberra Times are regarding news on world badminton! :
Loh, Okay, although Canberra is the Capital - the Canberra times is more like a regional city news paper. Population of Canberra is about 350,000 compared with metropolis of Sydney and Melbourne. It is just a pleasant surprise to see any badminton news in the local paper. Although it is mainly because of Olympics. You cannot compare this paper to regions that carry current badminton news - like Indonesian and Malaysian papers. Regards Stuart