Badminton Preparation for London Olympic Games

Tuesday, 31 January 2012 14:23

Written by Rajinder Modi

New Delhi (ABC Live) An amount of 4.63 crore has been spent so far under ‘Operation Excellence for London Olympics 2012’ (OPEX 2012) scheme on the training/ foreign exposure on Badminton. Out of this, a sum of 2.58 crore was spent on National Coaching Camps organized for training of 38 players (24 men and 14 women) who were guided by 10 coaches and 5 supporting staff, while the remaining amount of 2.05 crore was utilized for foreign exposure of players.

The total duration of Camps has been 276 days till now. The training began in April, 2011, well before the London Olympics in order to maximize India’s chances to win medals in the games. This was stated by Mr. T.P.S. Puri, Vice President (Administration), Badminton Federation of India (BFI), in review meeting of the preparation for Olympics, 2012, called by Mr. Ajay Maken, Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports.

The Sports Minister also asked Federation’s Vice President to submit all the requests for gadgets and equipments as well as for foreign training of players, if any, within 2-3 days so that the necessary clearances for the same can be given at the earliest.

In the meeting, the BFI Vice President also apprised the Sports Minister regarding the qualifying criteria for the London Olympics. A player or a team, in order to qualify, will have to attain the requisite Badminton World Federation (BWF) ranking on 3rd May, 2012 based on results achieved during the period 2nd May, 2011 to 29th April, 2012 in the ranking tournaments. For singles events a player needs to be in top 32 of BWF rankings and for Doubles, a team needs to be in top 16. Mr. Puri further gave details of the upcoming ranking tournaments which are as follows:

Tournament	Venue	Schedule
, Thomas & Uber Cup Preliminary Round Asia	Macau	14^th Feb-19^th Feb, 2012
German Open	Mulheim an der Ruhr	28th Feb-04th Mar, 2012
All England	Birmingham	06th Mar-11th Mar, 2012
Swiss	Basel	13th Mar-16th Mar, 2012
New Zealand Open Grand Prix	Auckland	26th Mar-31st Mar, 2012
Australian Open GP Gold	Sydney	03rd Apr-08th Apr, 2012
Badminton Asia Championships	Sichuan Province	17th Apr-22nd Apr, 2012
India Open Super Series	India	24th Apr-29th Apr, 2012

In the run-up to the Olympics, the performance of Indian Badminton players has been satisfactory so far, with Saina Nehwal, Jwala Gutta, Ashwini Ponnappa, V. Diju, Ajay Jayaram and P. Kashyap being pick of the players. Ms. Nehwal in women’s singles event and Ms. Gutta and Ms. Ponnappa in women’s doubles event won the gold medal in Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi in 2010.

In the Beijing Olympics 2008, two players qualified from India, Saina Nehwal for Women’s Singles Event, and Anup Sridhar for Men’s Singles Event. Ms. Nehwal reached up to the quarter-final stage while Mr. Sridhar lost in 1st Round.