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.

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.

Free ice creams and the first Victory Ceremony

The air-con-and-free-ice-cream combo of South West Trains pretty much made my morning today. So much so that it even made up for the fact that I got on the 14-stop-tube again (note to self: use. the. Met. line!)

Anyway, 14 stops later, I made it to Wembley Arena. I was a tad later than expected but was sped along quite drastically by the Miley Cyrus song that iPod shuffle decide to select just as I went down the steps to the 'last mile'. Despite the fact that this is horrifically cheesy and I should probably be mortified at the fact that it is on my iPod in the first place (and potentially even more mortified that I didn't skip past it...!), in true Disney-montage-style, the mopper made it to the ball/ Arena on time. Even though the mopper was today on her first ever day off and so was, therefore, not actually mopping.

For some reason, the seating arrangements for us had changed today and we were designated to the 'Olympic Family' stand. This didn't seem to be the easiest place to gain access to...

In the end we made it in (this makes it sound as if we gatecrashed, but we were actually totally law-abiding, accreditation-showing Games Makers) and we ended up on the front row, so I was pretty set for the day (other than the minor issue of neither having got food nor gone to the toilet).


Today I saw:

Men's singles semi #1: Lee Chong Wei (Malaysia) vs. Chen Long (China)
Men's singles semi #2: Lin Dan (China) vs. Lee Hyun Il (Korea)
Mixed doubles final: NL. Zhang & YL Zhao (China) vs. C. Xu & J. Ma (China) (surprisingly, China won this match)
Mixed doubles Victory Ceremony: NL. Zhang & YL Zhao (China- gold), C. Xu & J. Ma (China- silver), J. Fischer & C. Pedersen (Denmark- bronze) (yes, Europe!)

It was fantastic to actually be there and be watching an Olympic final (big tick next to that on the good ol' Bucket List), although it did make me feel like a right old codger, because it meant that it had been 8 years since 'back in the day' when it was Gail and Nathan playing that match in Athens. (In totally unrelated news, this also means that it is also 8 years since I last owned a pet hamster).

After the Victory Ceremony I made full use of the 'Field of Play' access part of my accreditation, and jumped over chairs and ran down corridors (Jess Ennis, watch out) to go to get some pictures of the players whilst they were being interviewed. Contrary to attempts over the past couple of days, this picture-taking was actually all done with a sim card in my camera...


My parents had tickets for today's matches (meaning that they will never witness my mopping ability live on the international stage, only on TV or in the kitchen). (Hi mum and dad if you're reading! It was great to see you and I hope that you had a great Games *big Games Maker smile*, but don't think that you're getting completely off ever cleaning the kitchen floor...)


Anyway I have a 6AM wake-up call tomorrow morning, so I am going to go to sleep (which is something that I do very well) so that I can get up in the morning (which isn't one of my strong points).


Olympic spot of the day: Xie Xingfang in the stand opposite Lin Dan during his match (if my long-distance-athlete-spotting-skills and my camera's optical zoom and are anything to go by).