Indonesia’s badminton nightmare

[Saffron Lenin]

Indonesian badminton fans are lamenting the debacle at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, as their team prepares to come home empty-handed.

This was the first time that Indonesia, once a widely feared badminton powerhouse, failed to win any medals in the sport at the Asian Games in its 61 years of participation

https://asianews.network/indonesias-bad ... nightmare/

[Saffron Lenin]

I am not sure if Indonesian media is overreacting!!! In the recent BWF junior world championship happened few days ago, they finished 2nd winning 4 medals, which shows that they have decent amount of young talent coming up (unlike India)

[prasen9]

They have young talent but it may not mean much. That is, there are way more youth World Champions than Olympic medalists, Asian Games medalists and World Cup winners, etc. This is because youth championships are restricted to a age-range of 2-3 years at most realistically while to win a senior medal you are competing against peers in a 10 year range, sometimes 15. So, I would not be happy if we all of a sudden get no medals just because some of our juniors won something. Better than nothing, of course. It may be Indonesia is over-reacting but I am just giving a general logic to say why it does not matter that much if some of your juniors win something. It does not mean that winners are just around the corner. It means you have a chance, maybe to have some youngsters and the Indonesians, with their great tradition in badminton, are not happy with that. We, on the other hand, have a gold and a bronze, etc. at hand and so are happier even though our pipeline is not as stocked. Someone here said that maybe Indians develop later. Let's hope that is true.

[sameerph]

Yes, that must be a big shock for Indonesian public not getting a single medal even a bronze at the Asian games. This was as compared to 8 medals which they got last time. It is bound to raise a hue and cry in their media. They have #1 player in Asia in mens singles (Ginting), had #1 team in mens doubles entering Asian games and had a world championship silver medalist pair in womens doubles too. So, missing medals altogether in all these 3 disciplines must be really disappointing for them.