Kim Dong Moon's residency

How did you find out he's moving to/visiting vancouver in the first place?

 

You never know, he might be moving to the U.S. in 6+ months.

 

As far as I know. I thought he was roped into the language study thing for the whole year. He has a home-stay situation and everything. It's a program run by the Korean athletic federation. Mind you, I thought that originally it was intended that he be involved in a coaching capacity somehow, as well. The last news article here, in March, continued in the vein about how Ra would continue to miss him all year.

 

Kim Dong-moon and Ra Kyung-min at Lake Louise.

These are just from Kim's website. In the caption below the photos, it explains that the two "foreigners" in the photos are "club boss Dave and his daughter".

 

he had photo taken with some vrc members already.

 

the club boss is dave mcmaster, head coach of calgary winter club.
KDM did a 2 week camp there. The backdrop is lake louise

 

It all makes sense now. I wondered what club he was talking about. I saw this post about Kim's stint in Calgary but I didn't have any reason to recall that the CWC head coach was a Dave. So, I take it that Ra did show up to watch in Calgary. It's funny I haven't noticed a thread in which anyone wrote about that camp during or after.

 

now i hear kdm is staying in calgary, probably for ~ 2 years.

 

Yes, Kim Dong Moon is staying in Calgary for a while and teaching some lessons at the Calgary Winter Club and helping out with the competive training program. From what I've heard, it's until sometime in April for English at the U of C and Dave had to secure the arrangement through official channels with the Korean badminton assocation.

On another note I was at the Glencoe for the exhibition match and talked to Howard Bach for a while during the reception afterwords. He's a pretty nice guy and has a real "jee wizz I'm famous" kinda of thing going on but in a very humble and positive way. Nice to see that it hasn't spoiled him at all.
I asked him about the 2006 WC in Madrid and he said he wasn't going due to "other commitments". Yes, he's not playing with Tony anymore but at least you'd think he'd be there with another partner anyway being the present world champion.

Tony Gunawan actually looked a little tired of all the attention he gets as one of the best doubles badminton players on the planet today but Howard seems to really revel in it. He even gave me his personal business card which says, "badminton player" on it. Hehe, I thought that was pretty neat.

One thing that really amazed me is the height with which Howard Bach can jump for such a short guy on smashes. It's like he's almost flying in the air sometimes. As for Gunawan, as I watched him play he appeared to be on cruise control playing just good enough to beat Beres and Milroy but there were a few points were you could just see he has another two steps above that level where he can put the shuttle on the floor almost at will whenever he chooses. Amazing to see it in person and I was maybe about 36 " from the side of court watching the whole time.

Lastly, both Milroy and Beres broke a racket each in the doubles demo game and that's not from hitting rackets. The black knight protons they both use just simply can't take the power they have which I heard Will strings his at 32 lbs. and Mike less than that. Snap, they just don't make those ones strong enough to be strung super tight.

 

I was there too, pretty nice reception atmosphere. I see proton as a decent strong racket. My guess is poor stringing. I saw Milroy's broke his, died of high noon disease. I didnt see how beres break his.