Can anyone tell me what the deal is with Chinese players retiring so early? They get to be number one in the world, then retire after a couple of seasons. I read somewhere that the Chinese Badminton Association has a rule that once you retire from playing for them, you cannot play abroad in another country (and earn money for doing so) for a period of at least four years. Maybe the Chinese stars retire early so that they can come back in four years time and still be young enough to be competitive. I'm sure they can earn more playing in some other countries than in China, but it's a shame that they don't stay on the circuit longer.
In my opinion it's because of the "burn bright - fade away quickly" paradigm that seems to rule amongst Chinese badminton coaches... Many Chinese players quit early because of injuries, due to their extreme training methods, and that they are drilled so hard from a very early age.
From what I've read about the daily gruelling physical training that she went through, I can understand if Gong just wants to take it easy now that she has succeeded in all her main goals. Still, it's does seem a shame. Camilla Martin was a top player when Gong first came out on the tour, now Gong has retired and Camilla is still playing.
I agree with Mag about the "extreme training". With such "hell" training method, a lot of young stars be plugged with various of injuries at early age. The other reason is, Chinese team has such a huge "pool" of alternates. Each year, they select the futher stars from each state/city team, and let them compete with the national elites. Winner stay, loser out. Therefore, if a national elite lost his/her mode, then, u know what will happen. I do know certain case, that young elites do a nice "bounce back" in the following yr, but I believe the aged ones will just retire after they been defeated in the internal selection.
Competition for a place in Chinese National team is crazy. I don't know how is in other countries. Once I saw my coach with dozens of photos of nice young girls. He said they all were potential candidates for the national team - from 1 province only!!! Once you become a national team player you're the one that everybody wants to beat. Unless you are able to take that pressure, otherwise you'll crack sooner or later. Motivation, passion are other reasons as well. Before a national team player had many benefits not enjoyed by most other 'common' people. Nowadays the economic situation changed and there are opportunities more rewarding financially than being a national team player. Is Gong Zhi Chao venturing into show business a good example?
Yep, turnover rate in the Chinese team is high. They have such a huge population, they can jolly well afford it... if you can't maintain your standard, you're out. Btw, I was going to rant about Singapore being too small (among other things) but I guess that's veering off-course.
I heard that she did appear in some shows, and opened a badminton school in a southern state of China. If I did not remember wrong, it is either GuangDong, or GuangXi.
GZC is an example that sprung out at the moment of writing. There are many others. Yang Yang also retired early. If he wished he could still play a few more years. One other that I personally knew - he was my first badminton coach, gave up badminton when he found something more financially rewarding. According to a Chinese national coach, he (my first badminton coach) could be Chinese singles champion (technically he was way better than the then Chinese singles champion) and surely among the top 3 players in the world if he wanted to. As I mentioned before, pressure is just to great to handle sometimes. Some selected players, in order to keep the position in the national team, train 7 days a week. This is not healthy and sooner or later injuries happen. I heard some stories about players in the national team from my coach. All I can say is that not always the coach is responsible to players leaving the team. To attain the goals in any level, the path is not through harsh training. Players have to understand what they are doing. Coaches have to tell the players the reason why they are doing certain things. Players can discuss with the coaches what they think might suit them best. The best results can be achieved when the players have the motivation/enthusiasm to do the things by themselves. All the Chinese coaches I had the chance to meet always stressed this point. Interestingly enough, one that is known to be harsh is the one that stressed this point more often.
If I did not remember wrong, Yangyang's retirement was a "mystery" at that time. Some ppl talk about injury, someone say its $$$. It created such a huge debates among badminton fans at that time.
Not sure about YY. Rumours has it that he did not have the motivation to go through the training to keep his standard. Probably opportunities outside badminton could also be a factor. Things we know is after retirement he setup his business and later went coaching in Malaysia.
