Our Blog - Paris Olympics - Badminton

Badminton was interesting to watch for a few reasons. One is that they seemed to get really sweaty, like it was hard work. And you would see them take a huge swing at it but the shuttlecock just doesn't go very far. This time, we were up at the North side of Paris in the Porte de la Chapelle arena.

We got there early and, like in most of our events, the mascot Phryge, showed up to take pictures with the fans.

I don't think I caught this at the beginning of the Table Tennis match, but they open each event with an interesting thing. It is called "les trois coups" (3 strikes) and it comes from ancient theater performances. In many cases, the person is a former athlete but sometimes just a volunteer or public figure. Tennis great Billie Jean King performed the three-strikes ritual ahead of the Rafael Nadal-Carlos Alcaraz doubles match at Roland Garros. In this case, it was a wheelchair volunteer.

The line judges, volunteers, and referees then came out, along with the players. The referee in the chair introduces the players and they start. The serving styles are much more muted, just a quick flick over the net.

The rules are like I remember from playing badminton as a kid, except that they have challenges and video replays. Games go to 21 but you have to win by 2 points and it is the best of 3 games. After the match ends, the players file out and up (actually towards us) where the media was for interviews. Here is the American player, Beiwen Zhang, who beat Thuy Linh Nguyen in straight sets 22-20, 22-20. She is an interesting player ... born in China and played for China from 1990-2007. She moved to Singapore at the age of 13 in 2003 and then competed for Singapore from 2007-2021. She had moved with her parents to Las Vegas in 2013 and became a US citizen in 2021 and started competing for the US. Unfortunately, she lost her next match in the Round of 16.

Here is one of the guys matches, Misha Zelberman from Israel against Prince Dahal from Nepal. Zilberman won in straight sets 21-12, 21-10. You could kinda tell early-on that this wasn't going to be necessarily close.

This match was between Finland's Kalle Koljonen and Kunlavut Vitidsarn from Thailand (in red). The match ended in early in the 2nd game when Koljonen retired. Vitidsarn made it all the way to the gold medal match, losing to another person who was playing in the same grouping, Victor Axelsen from Denmark. The Dane is ranked 2nd in the world and won the Gold both here and in 2020 Tokyo, while the Vitidsarn is ranked 4th in the world and went home with a Silver medal in his first Olympic games.

While I didn't get any videos of him playing, here is the future Gold medalist, Victor Axelsen, leaving after his win.

It was actually different than I expected, with a combination of net-play and overhead smashes.