Zhang Ning retains Beijing Olympic Singles Gold

We don't find many people defending their Olympic Badminton titles. "Smashing" Zhang Ning, now 33 years of age, defended her Olympic Singles title as she managed to beat current world no.1 and fellow Chinese star Xie Xingfang 21-12 10-21 and 21-18.


Zhang Ning in action against Xie Xingfang (Photo credit: Lars Baron/Getty Images)




Xie Xingfang in action against Zhang Ning (Photo credit: Lars Baron/Getty Images)



Zhang Ning celebrates her victory. (Photo credit: Lars Baron/Getty Images)



Zhang Ning poses with her gold medal. (Photo credit: Lars Baron/Getty Images)

It was Zhang's final Olympic appearance and she produced a remarkable game to overcome her younger competitor. Zhang looked tired after losing the second set; however she showed some great mental strength to maintain her focus in the game and to produce some great badminton display throughout the game. It was one of those days where both players were fighting each other, point for point and in the final set and the game could have gone either way. In the final few points of the game, we could see Zhang's tiredness showing but her determination to win was stronger than Xingfang as she maintained her composure and continued to play more aggressively with attacking lobs, chops, smashes and sharp net plays which lead to her crowing of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Badminton Women's Singles Champion.


"After Athens I didn't think about participating in Beijing," said second seed Zhang following her victory.


"I'm 33 years old and I made it to the finals - I believe it was tenacity that got me this gold medal." said Zhang. Personally I admire people like her as role models to the sport. She has great sportsmanship and a humble personality. She reminds me of Andre Agassi who proved that with determination and the right mind, age is just a number.

Credit to Xie Xingfang too for producing a fine display of badminton throughout the tournament. It is Xingfangs first ever Olympics and I'm not too sure if she will still be playing in the next Olympics in London. In an earlier interview Xingfang has said that she wants to retire from badminton one day to live a normal life, "cooking soup" for Lin Dan when get gets back. :) however I'm not too sure when.


China missed a clean sweep of the women's singles medals when Indonesia's Maria Kristin Yulianti took bronze. Congrats to Maria for the bronze! She had a great tournament with a great run; upsetting the many seeded players who came in her way.

Womens Singles Gold Medalist: Zhang Ning
Womens Singles Silver Medalist: Xie Xingfang
Womens Singles Bronze Medalist: Maria Kristen

Check out Zhang Ning's road to Beijing here.

Catch Zhangs victory thanks to BBC UK.

Anticipation, Predictions and Forecast

Anticipation, Predictions and Forecast: The 3 important key elements I've learnt from a former great player who I had the honor to learn from when I was 15 years old.

During one of our regular training (normally on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday) sessions at the Selangor Badminton Hall (SBA), a 50+ year old man came by to pay my coach CIKU a visit and to have a have a workout while he was at it. We were doing our regular drills and sparring before we played a game or two.

After our drills and sparring session, our coach requested us to play a doubles game with this 50+ year old man. My partner Gnana Easwaran and myself went straight into the court to play the game and in our minds, we thought it was going to be an easy game. During the game we found it amusing that we had to struggle at the start of the game. This 50+ year old man was actually giving us difficult game... He took all our shots and he returned the shots to difficult places to retrieve. We had a good game and even though we won, this 50+ year old player thought us these 3 words as per the topic says. After the game he taught us the key to playing against us was to anticipate, predict and forecast our next shots.

We anticipated and moved to the spots the opponents would hit as they hit the shot; we predicted the shots they would use and we always did a forecast of our next opponents. It’s like a guessing game of poker too which is why I feel badminton is a complete sport. The advice he gave us helped us change our game which led us to win the Under 15 MSSD & MSSS (the state and district) doubles titles. At that year I partnered Chan Chong Ming at the MSSM (Malaysian Schools Meet) and surprisingly we won the MSSM too.

You must be wondering who this player is as much as I wondered when we played against him. This veteran player is Tan Aik Huang (picture on the right; source bbc.co.uk) the former Malaysia great who won the All England in 1966 and many other tournaments during his peak.

With the long and winding intro to the story, it brings me to who do you think will reach the Men's Singles, Men's Doubles, Women's Singles, Women's Doubles & Mix Doubles Finals? My predictions are as follows what are yours? Would be great to see how many of these 10 predictions are spot on! :)

SmashingMark's Predictions

Men's Singles: Lin Dan (Chi) vs Lee Chong Wei (M'sia)

Men's Doubles: Koo Kien Keat, Tan Boon Heong (M'sia) vs Fu Haifeng, Cai Yun (Chi)

Women's Singles: Xie Xingfang (Chi) vs Rasmussen Tine (Dmk)

Women's Doubles: Yang Wei, Zhang Jiewen (Chi) vs Du Jing, Yu Yang (Chi)

Mix Doubles: Widianto Nova, Natsir Liliyana (Ind) vs Robertson Nathan, Emms Gail (Eng)

As you can see, I've predicted that there will be a Chinese player in all finals except the Mix Doubles. From a newspaper I read today which Li Yongbo has said that (the head coach of China), if China doesn't win 3 gold’s out of the 5 means they have failed. I bet that helps ease the pressure to the players and adds more egos to his name. I do hope to see the rest of the world give China a run in all badminton events and I’ll be so looking forward to see Yongbo's face when they don't win 3 gold medals. After all, they are the favorites and they have the home crowd behind them, but in the new 21 points system, anything can happen.

Do share with me your predictions...

Ciao da mao!