One year ago

Well, London, world, mopping blog readers (leave the best until last, eh?), it has been a year.

I doubt I will surprise anyone by saying this, but I miss being in London and it being 2012.

I am currently not in London and it is 2013 (well spotted, I can hear you say), but I can hear the Underworld track ''And I Will Kiss'' in the background of the BBC's ''Anniversary Games'' (a song which has, since, become my most loved of EPIC DRIVING TRACKS, if you would like a fact of the day), I can see the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Stadium, I have just watched the Games Maker who sat next to me at the SPOTY Awards be interviewed (small world and all that), and am just about to re-witness the Queen jumping out of a helicopter. So, as far as I am concerned, today is a good day. Just as it was a year ago.

On my desk at university I keep a laminated article of quotes that people made about the Games Makers. You know, just because in moments of essay-desperation a casual ego-boost is always helpful. (Dear lecturer who will remain anonymous, you may have set me this essay, but I mopped the Olympic badminton courts, SO THERE, NURRRRRRRR).

As fellow blogger and former sports editor of the Independent, Charlie Burgess, said:

''The Big Purple and Red Society really did work. Let’s keep it that way''.

We did the Olympics well, London. And so, with my Olympic-fix sorted for the time being and with renewed pride to be British (welcome to the world, George the Royal Baby- I would be lying If I said that I wasn't one of the super-keen-enthusiasts who kept the Tatler live-stream from the Lindo Wing on for two days), I feel fairly well prepared to head off to be an English Language Assistant in Germany for a while. But not until I've had my interview for the Commonwealth Games in 2014. This volunteering malarkey has to be done properly, after all. 

The Great Danes

Tonight, in the Farum Arena in Copenhagen, Tine Baun will grace a badminton court for the very last time as a professional player. In a farewell match reminiscent of the one between Peter Gade and Lin Dan last year, Baun will be joined on court by fellow Danish legend, her predecessor, to be exact; World Champion and Olympic silver medallist, Camilla Martin.

The fact that they have played across different generations and used 3 different scoring systems between them, with Camilla playing before the BWF Super Series even existed, makes their respective results almost impossible to compare, but, with 1 Olympic medal, 2 world medals, 4 All England titles, 5 European titles and 23 national titles between them, one thing is certain: they were both a European force to be reckoned with.

Badminton at the moment remains to be a sport which is heavily, in fact almost completely, dominated by Asia. Only 1 European has ever won an Olympic gold medal in the sport (Denmark's Poul-Erik Høyer Larsen in Atlanta '96), and, out of all of the Olympic badminton medals ever awarded, only 10 of them have ever gone to Europeans.

At face value, this doesn't seem to present a problem: China, in particular, are a world-class-well-oiled-badminton-player-churning-out-machine, and all credit to them. Their almost effortless badminton is a pleasure to watch and I feel extremely privileged to have been able to do so, especially during the Lin Dan, Xie Xingfang and Zhang Ning era. However, for a sport to remain in the Olympic programme, it has to be clear that there is a healthy amount of competition between nations for medals. With a comparative 81 Olympic medals having been awarded to players from Asian countries, for the most part, this  'healthy competition' is not exactly the case at the moment.

The clear, pretty much constant exception to this rule comes in the form of the Danish national team, who, after the 2011 Sudirman cup, are, as a collective, ranked 2nd in the world. Individually, they are also the only European nation with players in all 5 disciplines currently ranked within the top 7 internationally, and also boast strength in depth, something which is shown by the fact that all 3 of their top men's singles players rank inside world's top 25.

If we focus on the singles, the results, in particular, of Peter, Camilla and Tine clearly demonstrate that Europe are capable of producing quality world class players, but they also demonstrate that, when Denmark are taken out of the equation, Europe struggles to produce players of this standard in any quantity. To quote Danish coach, Thomas Stuer Lauridsen, Tine ''is our Chinese beater. But she is only one against many Chinese''. Looking at the men's singles situation at present, if we exclude the Danish, there is only one European within the top 25 men's singles players in the world. Put simply: it needs to be more!

When Camilla retired, there was her friend and roommate, the then still Tine Rasmussen, waiting to take over. Tine, who had, after finishing university, been juggling professional badminton with work in a kindergarten and an office to fund herself, had, towards the end of Camilla's career, been fairly matched on standard with Martin. This time, though, it seems as if for the Danish number 2, Karina Jorgensen, who is currently ranked number 62 in the world, the transition into the top 10 to challenge the Chinese will take a bit more time. Meaning only one thing: now, it is up to the rest of Europe to take some pressure off Denmark and to step up to the mark.



Tine coaching Marin to victory at the recent Axiata Cup

After Tine won the All England in 2008, Camilla, now married and using the surname Martin Nygaard, famously text her compatriot with ''welcome to the club''. The question is: who will be the next one to get that text?

Looking to the future, my European to watch would be Spaniard Carolina Marin, who, at just 19 years old is currently ranked 29th in the world, making her Europe's 5th most highly ranked player at the moment (4th if we factor in Baun's retirement). Recent winner of the Finnish Open, Marin also represented Team Europe at last month's Axiata Cup, where she was undefeated throughout the competition. An impressive record for anyone, let alone somebody so young. Interestingly, during the European Team Championships last year, Marin also beat Tine, surely demonstrating her ability to compete with the best.

But, for now, rather than worrying about the future for Europe, tonight belongs to someone who has, at times singlehandedly, kept the state of European women's singles safe for the past decade. I think badminton blogger Mark Phelan summed it up best: ''I started to write a piece about Tine's contribution to European badminton. I stopped after 1 hour because I couldn't find the words''.

I had intended to do the same, but what followed was the realisation that I do not have the words to do her contribution to European badminton justice either.

Always hesitant at the inevitable comparisons drawn between her and Camilla, she always expressed a desire to be ''just Tine''.

When she was on her game, there was no beating her. Often coming back to win from a disadvantaged position, her mental strength and passion when playing was always obvious. On court, her physical strength was, too, and, even after rupturing her Achilles tendon, she still had the rare ability to be able to generate intimidating power from the back of the court when her opponent had her out of position. Off court, she was unintimidating and approachable, respectful and kind in temperament. A true ambassador to badminton, in the words of Gail Emms, ''if [she] hasn't inspired young girls to take up badminton, then I don't know what will''.

When asked about tonight's match, Camilla, who, after retiring still plays in the Danish 2nd division, responded ''I have known Tine for many years. We've travelled together, shared a room together and trained together, and I'd really like to help to give her good evening, and to give people a chance to say goodbye properly''.

Whatever the result of tonight's match, I hope that Tine gets the goodbye that she deserves. If you're in Copenhagen tonight, make sure that you see her off properly.

The one where Tine Baun gives me her dresses.

As I didn't do the Olympic finals because they were saved for Young Games Makers, today's finals were my first ever international finals. Although this clearly wasn't something that bothered me too much, as I've actually only just realised this whilst racking my brain for a statistic to whack out for you.


After the match yesterday, I requested to do Tine's singles. I know I'm predictable, feel free to fake surprise, but mopping the last match of her career was just too exciting to pass up on.

The line judges were due to have a briefing at 10:15, and so we arrived at a similar time. I would say that this was because we were super time-aware-moppers, but it was really just because we wanted to make the most of their 10KG supply of chocolate buttons. I'm only joking. Or maybe I'm not.

Tine was the 3rd match on, so I was able to watch the men's and women's doubles, both of which China won convincingly (with China beating China potentially a little too convincingly in the women's), before I had to line up for the match. Upon lining up for the match, I was pleased to find out that I was going to be on court with some of my favourite line judges from the Olympics, one of whom has taught me something very exciting this week: how to make a high-5 turn into a snail. On the subject of high-5s, it is routine that the umpires shake your hand before and after the match, and the manager of the line judges high 5s you as you walk into the tunnel. For some reason, the pre-match high-5 was non-existent before this final, and I didn't like this change in routine too much, so resorted to grinning at one of the tunnel attendants in the hope of getting a high-5 out of it. It didn't work. And I looked very silly.


For finals, someone had also come up with the idea of the Field of Play team marching out onto court in synch with each other, and to the beat of the music. Complete with opposite-arm-and-leg-swinging-coordination. We spent a lot of time in the line-up trying to find out how to make it work (well, the line judges did anyway- I was the short one chosen to keep looking under the scaffolding of the knock-up court to check the warm-up progress of the players, and thus the time left for us to master the walking technique), but coordination was just not really happening for us. That said, though, we did attempt it, but due to the technicalities of trying to look directly ahead, whilst simultaneously negotiating a spinning door and having to check the floor for the white-tape-of-trip-hazard-potential, and having to maintain a completely straight face, whilst clearly having the marching ability of the Dad's Army platoon, we seemed to abandon the idea shortly after taking a few steps.

Upon getting to the mopping chair, feeling rather like Usain Bolt measuring out for his starting blocks, I adjusted my mop to suit my height, and the match began. I would like to think that Tine saw me and chose my side so that she was in good mopping hands for a win, but this probably was not the case. She did, however, start on my side, so I can pretend. She was playing a Thai girl, Ratchanok Inthanon, who is only 18, so it was a complete case of age vs. experience, with the winner of the match becoming either the youngest or the oldest person to ever win the All England.

I was quite surprised by the number of supposed Thai supporters in the crowd, although I suspect that they were actually the Chinese fans, and there was a minor case of Europe vs. Asia going on. We were talking earlier in the week about how loud this tournament has been, even in comparison with the Olympics (where there seemed to be a lot of polite clapping from non-badminton-playing-Brits going on) and, considering that there were no Brits left in after Thursday, the noise was pretty impressive!

The Danish fans, in all of their-matching-kit-glory, were, as always, sat in their block opposite Court 1, and, despite my Danish being fairly restricted, they seemed to be on top cheering form. The head coach of the Denmark team (and I'd noticed this on Saturday too) kept doing the 'get on the money' gesture whenever Tine looked at him after winning a point, which, in my massive attempt to remain every part the serious-mopper (or 'court attendant', as we've been called at these Championships), was coming very close to making me laugh. But, people, I held it together. I didn't smile either when she won, which it was obvious as soon as she was up in the 3rd end that she was going to, and she knew it as well as everyone else did! I was sat directly in front of the VIPs sofa and one of my quotes of the day came from a very excited Badminton England big wig who, as soon as she got to 16 in the 3rd, didn't seem to be able to stop repeating: she's going to do it, she's going to do it, she's going to do it (and so on, I'm sure you get the idea. I know I definitely did).

As Tine's win was pretty exciting, her coach told me after the match that she would take a while in media, but that she would be come to meet me when she had finished, so I sat on a random roll of carpet in the Back of House and waited, whilst trying very hard to work out the score of the men's singles final from how loud the cheering was. In the end I had worked out a fairly reliable technique: very loud cheers were for Chen Long's points, very loud cheers and a few chants were for Lee Chong Wei's points. This didn't always work, though, so my dad resorted to BBMing me the score from his computer. It was at some point during this BBM session that I looked up and realised that there was actually a livescore board directly in front of me...


Tine's coach was, meanwhile, bless him, alternating between watching the men's final, and making phone calls to update me on the media progress (which I neither needed nor asked for- I would have happily just waited!). Tine then emerged and came over to me and asked me if I would be ok to come to the stands with her, as all of her stuff was there. I, obviously said that that would be fine and went with her to the players' stand. The security-lady was slightly unsure about this, as I was authorised for the staff stand and not the one for players (despite the fact that on Friday when I tried to get into the staff stand, the security mistook me for a player and told me that I wasn't able to sit there), but I told her that I was with Tine, and Tine backed me up, and security-lady had no comeback to either of us. Booyah. We then went to her stuff and I met her family and we chatted for a bit and they took photos and it was perfect and she gave me one dress and then found another and gave me that one too! And, when I told her that I knew that she was going to win, she just gave me this all-knowing look!  Classic. She also apologised so much for not  having been able to wash the dresses, and I'm guessing that she must have sprayed them with loads of deodorant/ perfume because, in the least creepy way possible, my room currently smells of Tine Baun and not of me. She also complimented my mopping skills. Boom.

Team Mop then left the NIA and had a post-All-England-McDonalds to ease the pain of the fact that there were no more matches to mop. They then caught a very crowded train back up north, where things returned quickly to normal and a man was sick, and I was told off by a stroppy lady for kicking her chair by accident, but I didn't care one bit because I would like to be Tine Baun when I grow up.

Tine, it was an honour.

Lee Chong Wei

After a random drunk homeless man decided to practically knock our door down at 1AM, a lie-in was required. (I am aware that I potentially blog a little too much about sleep).

This is the door we walk out of. It spins.
This worries me.

We stayed in bed until about an hour before we were due at the NIA, but at least this avoided arriving at the Arena 3 hours early, and so a trip to find warmth in the ICC wasn’t necessary this time. We were given match numbers for the first few games on court, and I was match number 3, meaning that I had been allocated the Lee Chong Wei match. Booyah. After doing Lin Dan’s match at the Olympics, I am now pleased to have mopped for the golden duo and I feel like I am an accomplished mopper now. And, after careful comparison, I can now report that Lee Chong Wei is by no means as sweaty as Lin Dan is. I’m sure that fact has made a huge difference to your lives, you’re welcome.

Much to the amusement of the line judges,
I was given the task of guarding
the masking tape and
clipboard of power.

While I was walking off court from the men’s doubles, I realised that my team leader was madly motioning at me to run, so I overtook the queue of slowly-walking-serious-line-judges-and-umpires, and, in an on-court-off-court-on-court-rush reminiscent of the Olympics, practically knocking over half of the Chinese team on the way, I managed to Usain Bolt it to the tunnel for the next match on court: Tine Baun (who I may have sneakily requested to mop for this morning, just so that she was in good mopping hands en route to the final and all).

Tine (7^th seed) was playing the 5^th seed from Korea, and it was always going to be a close match. I was at the All England in 2008 when she (then Tine Rasmussen) won it and, as it’s her last tournament, I think that it would be fantastic to see her go out on a high, so I was Team Europe on this one (although, I mop in a totally unbiased fashion, please note). Tine didn’t start strongly and it was looking like she was going to be going out in straight sets, but she pulled through on experience to win the 1^st end 24-22, but then lost the 2^nd end 19-21 after being up at 11. And so it went to 3... At this point I was a nervous wreck for her sake (something which I obviously couldn’t display) and had to resort to sticking my fingernails into the palms of my hands to stop me hiding my head in my lap. This, when combined with the fact that I appear to have bruised the palm of my left hand on one of the mop’s screws yesterday, means that my left hand is not in an ideal state right now, but, have no fear, I will mop on (I know you’re secretly cheering). Anyway, as I’m sure the internet will tell you, Tine and her dress are in the final. As the internet will most probably not tell you (until now, that is), my mopping face faltered and I smiled. I don’t know how I feel about this. I can also exclusively report that Tine Baun is officially the least sweaty person I have mopped for. It may have been due to her long back-of-the-court-between-points-carpet-walking-sessions, but I am talking about not a drop of sweat. Not a drop. Too much information, I know.

Nope, I don't know what I'm doing either.

After the match I went up to the stands to watch the China vs. Denmark men’s singles with some friends. Coming from China, one of my moppers was obviously always going to be on team Chen Long. This did not bother me in the slightest, however, her over-enthusiastic-edge-of-seat-cheering, did panic me slightly and, as we were sat so high up, I had visions of her splatting onto the NIA floor after she wrongly estimated a jump-for-joy. Do not worry though, world, the mopping crew are unharmed and happy (China won).
 

Chilling where the big wigs chill.

When play finished there was a delay between the end-of-play and the reception for the volunteers, so we stayed around the arena floor and took some photos. It was at this point that I noticed the Danish head coach stood by himself, doing nothing. We had a brief mopping chat, and he said that he would speak to Tine’s coach about bringing a spare dress for yours truly. Shortly after, we relocated our photo session to the holding area for all technical officials and, it was at this point that Tine Baun, who had been having physio on the knock-up court round the corner, casually strolled past me. Although I am more than aware that you aren’t supposed to address players if you are lucky enough to have access to the same areas as them, I wasn’t exactly going to give the opportunity a miss or let her coach have the chance to forget, so I asked her if she would possibly have a spare dress after tomorrow’s final. And she said that she could arrange to. And that she would meet me backstage. And I am so happy. I just hope that it works, as I may have to mop for matches after hers, so don’t want to miss her! (To cover my back a bit here, as I would never ever ever normally try to address players or their coaches, both she and her coach were more than willing to speak to me, and I wouldn’t have asked them had I gauged the situation not to be appropriate).

The moppers then went to the reception for the volunteers, ate lots of brownies, and are currently doing everything that is needed to prepare for mopping at the All England finals tomorrow. As well as greatly enjoying the conversation that went on between my dad and Imogen Bankier on Twitter:

Court Maintenance

We spent the morning trying to find Chinatown and, after successfully doing so, with the help of one of my moppers acting as an interpreter to order my food, I ate dinner (I mean the meal at midday), before heading to the NIA. Our 3-hours-early-punctuality was apparently just a little too keen, and we spent the remnants of the morning making the most of the Wi-Fi in the ICC...

After seemingly instinctively analysing various mopping techniques yesterday, it was then time to whack out the mopping face and get my mop on.  Yesterday, I had noticed that a lot of the moppers had seemed to be hunched over, which I wouldn’t exactly class as an ideal technique, but, upon getting on to court, I realised that this was a technique pretty much unavoidable: the mop was about as tall as the distance between my foot and my knee! This was until one of the line judges next to me felt my mopping pain, took the mop off me and taught me the singularly most important lesson of my life: how to extend a mop. His extension of the mop was, in fact, slightly too enthusiastic and I was left with a mop about the height of me, but I mopped through the technical problems and spent the rest of the session extending every mop that I could get to.

I mopped for:
Xiaolong LIU & Zihan QUI vs. Mohd FAIRUZIZUAN & Mohd ZAKRY
Saina NEHWAL vs. Shixian WANG
Tontowi AHMAD & Lilyana NATSIR vs. Robert MATEUSIAK & Nadiezda ZIEBA
Markis  KIDO & Pia ZEBADIAH vs. Sudket PRAPAKAMOL & Saralee THOUNGTHONGKAM

All of the matches that I was on for seemed to be 3-set-marathons, and, as I hadn’t needed to do the sit-up-straight-in-the-mopping-chair since summer, I was clearly out of practice and within about half an hour my back was not loving life, and I was relishing the opportunity to be able to get up and mop because I could click my back on my way back to the mopping-chair! (Potentially too much information, I know).

The first match that I was on for was a very close 3-setter and the Chinese girl was very sweaty, which obviously made my life pretty exciting. She was also fairly shouty and, at one point, stared right through me and shouted in a way in which I can only describe as a bark. Although I have no doubt that she wasn’t actually looking at me, she unfortunately was staring right through my eyes, so I ish made eye contact with her before she did it. Hopefully the millions of viewers in China didn’t catch me visibly jumping up in my chair with shock...

The last match that I mopped for was probably the longest and, after the Thai pair (with very exciting long names, of course) thought that they had won in the 3^rd end, a fault was called and the Indonesian pair pulled back to win it. I was, as always, sat next to the coaches, one of whom seemed to take it upon himself to provide a running commentary on life in Thai, much to the amusement of the line judge next to me, who, I am assuming, vaguely understood at least some of what he was saying.

After today I am left with one lingering thought going into tomorrow: I am really not sure how I feel about the badminton-high-5. I preferred the good old days of the badminton-bum-tap.

I dedicate this post to Tine Baun's dress.

My All England experience began earlier than anticipated. In fact, it began with a pre-4AM text and a pre-9AM taxi journey from Durham to Newcastle and back to pick up shuttlecocks for my university, after we discovered that what appeared to be the entirety of the Yonex shuttlecock supply to Great Britain seemed to be being transported to Birmingham for the All England. And not to Durham for the 3 BUCS matches that we had at starting at 1PM yesterday. Which obviously should have been Yonex's priority. Read and take note, all you big wigs out there.

Other than the taxi driver hitting 90mph to get me back to Durham in time for the train, the journey down to Birmingham was otherwise pretty uneventful. Bar sleeping-grey-coated-man, who will most probably not read this (I had him down as more of Crufts man) but who was nevertheless sprawled out across the train table, and who ignored any of my requests to access my seat, which was not appreciated before 8AM. But I ended up with a better seat AND a nice neighbour, so take that, sleeping-grey-coated-man.

Anyway... today was mopping free for me and my 2 apprentice moppers (no, that isn't their official title, but I enjoy using it all the same), so we arrived early-ish to ensure that we got good seats. As it turned out, numbers were on the nonexistent side (who said badminton wasn't cool?!), and we were actually the 1st ones there... Hello, centre court, front row seats (which, after discovering 2 more Durham-ers, I didn't actually sit in, but the idea was there!).

Now, with my 2 apprentice moppers originating from Asia, there was a slight divide in the mopping community, with me supporting the very few Europeans. However, we could all agree on two things:

1. Tine Baun's dress was perfection. (As always) (See my previous very-excited-Tine-Baun-dress-posts)

2. The Chinese kit is pretty controversial. And potentially just a tad too orange.

Whilst I completely appreciate the daring nature of the Chinese top-to-toe-fluorescent-orange-kit, I'm not too sure whether they look like a pack of misplaced highlighters (suggestion for a future game: spot the difference between the Chinese kit and my lecture notes/ my hair), or whether they just posses an overwhelming amount of badminton swag. Although it is, admittedly, most probably the latter, them being China and world number 1s and all, Tine Baun just got it right. And she did so without hurting my eyes.   

In my fashion ratings of the day, the Polish mixed doubles pair and their matching-pink-and-blue-ensemble came in 2nd (their ranking was improved due to the matching physio-leg-tape), and Lee Chong Wei and his shiny red shoes came in 3rd. But they just couldn't touch Tine Baun (or Tyne Boon, as the man sat behind me would call her).

Today saw the entirety of the draw for all 5 events playing all of their matches, so it was a great opportunity to be able to support everyone playing, before I have to get my mopping-face back on tomorrow. It was fantastic to see Tine Baun (winner of the prestigious Mopper's Fashion Award 2012/13) play and win convincingly in what will be her last tournament before she retires, and the Danish men also played a great doubles match against an unseeded Chinese pair, even if the result wasn't the one which I had hoped for. Juliane Schenck also looked strong in the singles, and will hopefully be able to push for a spot in the latter rounds to rep the Europeans amongst us! My win of the day, however, went to Eriko Hirose, who absolutely slogged her guts out to go through with a well-deserved 20-22, 22-20, 21-19 win. It was also nice to see Rob Blair in action again, which allowed me to re-live some of the Glory Days of All England badminton, where you could buy a ticket for the semi-finals and be fairly confident that you would see a GB player in action.

Another interesting feature of the day was the fact that what looked like leaves appeared to keep drifting down onto centre court, delaying play. As Justin Bieber was the last one to be in the arena before the badminton, I am holding him entirely responsible.

After tiredness started to get the better of us moppers (concentration for tomorrow has to come first here at Mopping HQ), we headed back to the hotel (only after spotting a lot of the Korean/ Thai players controversially sporting Crocs outside in the English rain and puddles), and we are currently sat in our room trying to guess what noises our next door neighbours are making. The main debate at the moment is as to whether it is a car, a puma or a puma at large.

I have news...

Coming soon to three badminton courts in Birmingham: me and my mop. Prepare yourself, 340 million global audience. And, if that wasn't enough for you, I am bringing with me two trainee moppers. Feel free to sit down with a cup of tea if that excitement is too much for you.