I've only been watching badminton for about 12 years but what has happened to the professional badminton scene in the Netherlands? Apart from their WD pair Muskens/Piek, I don't see them being represented on the international stage in big competitions. A decade ago I would have considered them to be a powerhouse in European badminton but they haven't been able to build on their successes. Their place in Europe seemingly been overtaken by Russia, France and Spain. Their women's team made the Uber Cup 2006 finals losing to China 3-0. They had promising men's players like Dicky Palyama and Eric Pang, and successful women players like Mia Audina and Yao Jie. Are they experiencing a lull in talent or were they too reliant on imported talent? Has their funding been cut? Is the sport's popularity waning there? Anyone know or want to speculate?
Long story short: our national Olympic committee decided to stop funding badminton. It was a huge blow and next to that, the Dutch national badminton association wasn't really functioning properly. The Netherlands were still relying on a group of 5 excellent players (Dicky Palyama, Eric Pang, Mia Audina, Yao Jie and Judith Meulendijks). Some players of that same group were also involved in a row with the NBB (our association) about some sponsorship deals, which had some impact as well. Ofcourse the Netherlands became successful with the help of Yao Jie and Mia Audina, but they were the only two 'imported' players and be noted that Mia Audina married a Dutch man before deciding to play for the Netherlands (it was the Indonesian Badminton Association who gave her an ultimatum). All these players have retired from the international circuit. Our current top players are unfortunately no where near as good as these 5 in their heydays, but western players tend to peak at a higher age. Without the funding from NOS*NSF (National Olympic Committy), players were forced to get money from other sources with the help of individual sponsorships. They had to force themselves to be creative. Our prime examples are Eefje Muskens & Selena Piek, who are really putting badminton on the map again here in The Netherlands. They've worked hard and did it all by themselves. Our national competition circuit is not interesting enough for skilled and talented players, so many athletes choose to play in Germany, England or Denmark. The last major factor is that the smaller sports in The Netherlands are getting less popular. When you look at the figures from all the small(er) sport clubs in general, there is unfortunately a decrease of members at a steady rate. People choose with their wallet and it all happened since the economic crisis (cheap gym memberships are getting more popular). The Dutch particularly excell in team sports, and those sports (like soccer or field hockey) are always more popular.
It's also worth mentioning the XD pair of Arends/Piek. They play really well and they are continously shaking top pairs. There are some others pairs in these disciplines (WD and XD) that do alright on the european circuit, but I feel they are lacking badly on the others categories. Their #1 MS, Mark Caljouw isn't that good and super inconsistent. I follow the european tour and I haven't seen a dutch WS player or MD pair reach the latter stages of a tournament for quite some time now. I'm a junior playing in europe myself and as far as I know there's no promising junior (except possibly Joran Kweekel) in the dutch team.
Are you a junior from Sweden? I'm really curious to know about the demise of Swedish badminton. Heck, Sweden produced world champions around 20 years ago, pretty recent. Has badminton become less popular in Sweden from then onwards? It is interesting because neighbouring Denmark is consistently producing world champions and top 10 players....
Badminton has never been popular in sweden and I think it's actually much more known now than 20 years ago. I guess since badminton was less developed then the you could lean more on your physical ability and that's why countries like sweden could become world champions (just guessning). I think there's several reason for the poor state we're in now. And the biggest reason is that we are poor as heck. Compared to countries like france, we get pretty much zero funding from the state. If you're a national player, you don't really benefit from it at all. This year the u19 team sent 7 players to the world junior championships, which was a great experience for those players, but that consumed all the money and the rest of the team got pretty much no support this year despite being national players. Everyone has to fund their own tournaments and that makes people refrain from going abroad. We have a national centre that used to be located in the southern part of sweden (next to denmark), but they moved it to a city 7-8 hours north because that city offered more money. A lot of our best players are from the southern part and they refused to move when they moved the centre. That's why we have 1 XD pair, 1 WD pair and 1 MD pair in this centre at the moment which is terrible. In denmark they have loads of singles players, 3 of their mens singles are in the world top 10 atm. They have a ridiculous amount of double/mixed players as well who are top or close to top level which play with each other daily. The players here are working very hard and doing their best, but I think lack of sparring partners cripples them. I guess the fact that the amount of players in the centre is so small could be an economical issue, but I'm not sure of that. There might be something fundamental i'm missing but I think what's limiting us the most is lack of money and popularitet. You can barely make a living off of badminton in sweden, some of the senior national players have side jobs to get by. And until there's more money, I don't think we can expect sweden to develop in the long term anytime soon. I still have friends not knowing the difference of tennis and badminton.
Do you believe a dysfunctional national association played a part in the Olympic committee's decision? Has the national association picked up their act? So did the players just quit playing for the national team?
I don't know how much the Dutch Olympic committee knew about the state of our national association, but around that time it was horrendous. The Olympic committee stated that the sole reason was the lack of results from the athletes, but the national association played a huge part in it. To be honest, can't really say that our national association picked up their act (don't really follow their actions and decisions due to a lack of interest and faith)
Definitely worth mentioning is the Netherlands' second WD pair (world #28): Samantha Barning and Iris Tabeling. Though a bit in the shadow of Muskens and Piek, they've had some good results the last couple of months: Scottish Open final (which unfortunately ended prematurely with an injury for Iris), Bitburger Open QF and of course a bronze medal at the recent European Championships, beating Goliszewski/Nolte in an absolute thriller QF! Right now Samantha is recovering from an ankle injury, but they both hope to be on court after the summer break. And yeah, it's such a shame: you can be like 100th in the world in tennis, and get all the media's attention, but a top 30 badminton pair (or even top 10) is totally ignored here in the Netherlands.
