Canadian vs International

Discussion in 'Professional Players' started by Eurasian =--(O), Sep 7, 2005.

  1. Eurasian =--(O)

    Eurasian =--(O) Regular Member

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    I would like to get the opinions of why people think Canadian singles players are uncompetitive on the international circuit. I played a top open player today and even though I really didn't have a chance one thing struck me as the game progressed. The first couple of points he played agressively and thats how I like to be played. Then he just took the pace out of the game and cleared everything. Then started to walk all over me. Internationally a clearing game has pretty much become obsolete. I watched worlds in LA this summer and none of the best players clear when in position. When in position they smash or drop and very very occasionally clear. The guy I played today is in excellent shape. Almost international top player I believe. He does 6 min wall sits, 8 sets of 400 meters 3 minute break in 1:06. Are those not international fitness standards for badminton? Hes tall as well. He has a great smash, good footwork. I was thinking maybe all he has to change is his defensive style of play.

    Anyone else have any experiences or ideas as to why Canadian badminton players just aren't that good? Or for that matter North American badminton players.
     
  2. quik_silver

    quik_silver Regular Member

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    Sounds like this fellow doesnt want to play badminton anymore..:crying: And in Canada, people arent crazy about badminton..All they do is watch hockey..24/7...Or maybe he is pitying you..BUT that's just a guess...
     
  3. cooler

    cooler Regular Member

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    there are many many reasons, mostly different training environment and less distraction from other noises (video games, ipod, homework, part time job, etc). They get coaching from better experienced staffs, better sparring partners.

    He change tactic once he know he can own u because clearing is less risky and less strenuous. He want U to make the unforce errors. It's like a warmup exercise for him. :D
     
  4. rainbow

    rainbow Regular Member

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    Canadian players are just as competitive but to be fair, our atheletes don't train at the level of say, the Chinese, Indonesian or Malaysian national players.

    Especially in China where the talent pool is so vast, players stay in top shape in order to retain their places in the team. In other words, they play badminton like their lives depended on it. Consistency and results must be assured, hence their style of play.

    However, given the recent win by the US MD players in WC this summer, it is certainly very encouraging to all N. American players. Our Canadian players will one day explode into the international arena like they did, taking everyone by surprise!!
     
  5. event

    event Regular Member

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    Like the others who replied, I don't think that style of play is what is making the difference here. You can't take one person and teach him/her how to play a certain way and expect to produce a champion. Not enough Canadians get a chance at proper training at year-round facilities with good enough coaches at an early enough age. Some do, of course, but the best of "some" can't be expected to be competitive with the best of thousands or more as in China, Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia. I spoke to one Canadian national team member a couple of years ago and she had been playing since she was young and never in the school system but rather in a club and said the same was true of all national team members. Now a kid being part of a club usually means a few conditions have been met: money for membership, geographical proximity to said club, and parents or parents' friends being members. I may be over-simplifying but do your own sensitivity analysis of those conditions and you're still likely to conclude that the talent pool in Canada is going to be small. Schools are out of the question. Badminton just can't compete with all the other sports vying for gym time and the chances of a school having an experienced coach with the patience to put students through the rigors of fundamental training.
    In my gym in Korea, a local middle school has 3 girls who train there several hours a day and an elementary school has a dozen or so girls who train several hours a day. All year round! They will never waste their time on another sport until they've discovered that they won't go anywhere in badminton. This nascent program is just the tip of the iceberg. Not every school here has its own gymnasium but typically when one does, it is used for only one sport because the school will have only one sports team. The general student body may not be allowed to use the gym at all but the team gets to use the gym all year to train their athletes for that one sport only. Students who don't show promise are pitched back into the academic stream by high school and the prodigies may not have to do much academic work at all in high school. University athletes don't attend class to my knowledge. I don't know whether the top Canadian players spend any of their time on other sports but I'm sure all of them had to attend all their classes in high school. Maybe none of them go to university before they end their careers but if they do, you can bet that training and tournaments have to take a back seat to academics a lot more often than they do in the case of their competitors in other countries.

    Now consider that Korea has been a world power in badminton for over 2 decades and that you have all these former national team members and others who almost made it, none of whom have any academic background to speak of and you will see what a large pool of potential coaches you will end up with. Where does a place like Canada find a comparable pool of coaching talent? The U.S. or any other place that cares enough about sports programs to fund them adequately can import them but Canada can't or won't spend this kind of money. I once heard a rumour about Park Joo-bong going to Canada but it didn't happen. Didn't we have an Indonesian coach for the national team at one time, though? Still the middle school girls in our gym are taught by a former national team player and Korea has these people available for all levels.
    A guy I know who played all-island in New Zealand said a national team friend of his went to a training camp in China. There he saw a gym filled with hundreds of young kids who, he was told, were forced to spend 2 full years only on footwork during which time they wouldn't even hold a racquet! This is yet another echelon. Before long, I think results like Korea's 2001 Sudirman Cup win are going to look like pure flukes in the stream of China's dominance.

    World-class national team coaches are just the tip of the iceberg, I know, but this little tidbit from the IBF website is tantalizing nonetheless:

    Kim Dong Moon... has officially expressed his intention to go abroad and study English (in an English speaking country, or elsewhere with an English tutor) while helping out by sharing his knowledge with whomever is willing to make an offer. This is a great opportunity for many countries and interested parties can send their offers directly to the Korean Badminton Federation at admin98@chollian.net
    If only English were enough to entice many of the likes of Kim Dong-moon to Canada!
     
  6. Wong8Egg

    Wong8Egg Regular Member

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    Although I did not witness the game in person, but a friendly match were played in Toronto Lee’s badminton club last week between the world ranked #20th Canadian number one single player Andrew DABEKA and Hariawan, former Indonesia national team member. And the result turns out to be 15-2 hands down to Hariawan. Perhaps Andrew might not be in the best shape, but the result is indeed very disappointing. And not to mention the gap between Asian and North American native player is obviously bigger than the ranking can tell.:rolleyes:
     
  7. Eurasian =--(O)

    Eurasian =--(O) Regular Member

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    I've watched and played against many of the top Canadian players. I've watched a lot of international mostly tapes. In producing a world champion type player I think there is definately the talent pool for it in Canada. Calgary has some really good coaches in Ardy Wiranata and Chanarong! From my perspective I just can't seem to figure out why with all the training some of the players on the national training squad do why they get destroyed by southeast asian players. They have to be in comparable shape. The Canadians don't goto school, they are proffessional athletes. I think its just the way they think, their lack of creativity. Someone needs to be blunt with them and tell them exactly why they lose internationally. Not enough deception? Too easily decieved? Foot work lacking?

    The badminton community needs to figure out whats wrong with Canadians. They do train really hard! In great physical shape! In my opinion it has to be all mental and shot related. Those can be changed though! I seriously think that the top Canadians just don't have the means to analyze thier games and have the heart to realize that they have to change thier games!

    Another thing in Canada some of the best players are defensive. Internationally all players are at least 60% offensive.
     
  8. event

    event Regular Member

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    This is some interesting background that I was missing. The player I talked to mentioned a facility in Calgary as being one of the few places in the country where top badminton players had unfettered use of courts throughout the year. She also said that other dedicated gyms in Canada tended to be expensive. Ardy Wiranata may be the Indonesian coach I was thinking of. How many top coaches are there for all the young kids in Canada? In Korea, any city of 60,000 or more (and there are lots of them) has access to someone who was once capable of beating every player in Canada.

    I realize that the Canadians on the national team are professional athletes and that they live for badminton now but there are at least two major differences from the system I see here. One is that those same Canadians who spend all their time training now, may not have been doing that for as long or from as young an age as their Korean competitors. (Did they have to go to class as high students? Did they play badminton for several hours a day from the age of 10 throughout the year under the watchful eye of a former world-class player from day 1?) The other is, from how many kids of a comparable badminton background were they chosen? In Korea, the actual percentage of kids who get the opportunity to play badminton is quite small but it we're talking about a country with a younger population that is half again that of Canada. In Canada, there might be more kids like me who lived in a community with a once-a-week recreational club (7 months a year) and an active high-school team but the percentage of kids who live near a facility like you describe in Calgary has to be much smaller than in Korea. Of those kids, how many end up doing badminton year-round to the exclusion of all other hobbies like their Korean counterparts? In other words, the sheer number of Canadians who even have a shot at competing with Korean youths has to be very small. All badminton powers are even bigger than Korea except for Malaysia and Denmark and in those countries, I wouldn't be surprised if the greater relative standing of badminton culturally makes for a higher percentage of youth who are exposed to elite badminton opportunities at a young age. The Korean comparison is especially enlightening given that that bunch of Korean high school students descended on the Canadian Open in 2003 and took all five gold medals and a bunch of the others, too.
     
  9. cappy75

    cappy75 Regular Member

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    He's just toying with you. Think about it, wouldn't you have done the same if you're playing against a newbie or intermediate?

    The clearing game did indeed become obsolete in the international scene, but he's obviously not facing an equal opposition in you. If you're not his equal in speed and anticipation, then you obviously become the retriever type when you played against him... letting him set the pace. If he wanted to finish you off fast, he would have done it in record time already. The fact that he didn't and with his good conditioning may have suggested that he was merely 'training' you. It would be even more evident if you're playing in tournament environment against top players like him as tournaments can be marathons. Top seeds would try their best to conserve their energy to last the whole tournament.

    If you wanted him to smash at you, you could have just asked him to do just that. No need for a pretense of a game.

    Don't put yourself in similar footing as him or any other international players until you have at least had a few international (or even national) tourny experience under your belt. You have only gone through just a tiny fraction of what they had gone through. Internationals definitely undergo more intense training than our national team. Likewise, our national team more than what you do with your coach. It's this acknowledgement of reality that keep most of us humble and admire the feats of champions even more.


     
    #9 cappy75, Sep 10, 2005
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2005
  10. rainbow

    rainbow Regular Member

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    I think motivation and training conditions also play a part in the gap between North American players and international players.

    I don't know the percentage but I gather many of our players started out in private clubs. If this is the case, then the coaches are limited in how intensive a training they can impose on these youngsters. How many parents will continue paying club fees if all their kids do inside 2 years are footwork and no racquetwork.

    Besides, facilities here are a dream compared to some I've seen overseas. Many operate on a bare minimum: bad lighting, bad floors, bad air circulation, etc. Often times it's more like a sauna inside, easily 33C or more. Now can you imagine having to work up a sweat in that condition? By the time these youngsters have overcome all said conditions, they are physically and mentally tougher. Only when they have "graduated" to the elite or national team will they get to train in the beautiful courts inside stadiums that we often see in pictures.
     
  11. sharkw

    sharkw Regular Member

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    Just my two cents. The top Canadian players are very fit, but probably still a little below the top European and Asian players. In my opinion this does not account for the pretty wide gulf between top Canadian players and top international players.

    One of the factors that may account for part of the difference is related to stroke mechanics. I have had several conversations with a former world class player who now lives in Canada, who was playing at the time the Chinese players burst on the scene once China finally joined the IBF. Essentially they had developed stroke techniques that saw them demolish other international players who had not been exposed to such play, in another thread there is an anecdote about Tian Xianfu beating multiple time All-England champion Erland Kops 15-0 15-0.

    The stroke mechanics I am talking about is what I call the "rebound stroke", a very short preparation and follow-through stroke that is extremely deceptive and efficient. Training against this type of stroke is very useful as you must learn to react to the shuttle much faster. While they were once almost as closely guarded as state secrets, these techniques have since been disseminated widely through the hiring of Chinese coaches in many countries.

    Actually, some of the top Canadian players have assimilated these techniques, partly through experience and partly through training abroad. However, it appears that in Canada, all but the top import coaches are aware of this stroke technique, and as a result players are exposed to it relatively late. I remember an older thread mentioning that a foreign player/coach saying Canadian players have beautiful strokes, but don't know what to do with them.

    To be honest, it's not the fault of the coaches, very few of them have the pedigree of being a top athlete and learning what actually works. And even some of the training materials out of China still perpetuate the myth of the classical stroke and related footwork (chasse-step scissor kick as opposed to step jump-intercept) as being the way badminton should be played -- see the Xiong Guo Bao training video for an example. It has its place, but ignorance of other techniques is detrimental to the development of top players. Actually, the google video on badminton footwork is a very good representation of actual top level footwork in my opinion.

    Anyway, if anybody wants to see what I'm talking about, watch the stroke technique of players such as Liu Jun (a top Chinese player from the 90's) and Hendrawan. And feel free to tell me if I'm totally wrong and on crack!
     
  12. cooler

    cooler Regular Member

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    i cant say with authority of a world class coach but owning a 'rebound stroke' as u had termed is very desirable as it has deceptive feature in every shot. However, this require power and good footwork. This stroke cant be executed effectivelywithout sufficient wrist power and/or slower footwork. I have the toughest time against MS players who own this stroke. Only movement is their feet and wrist, very hard to read.
     

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