Beijing: As his 2018 season continued to go from bad to worse, the two-time Olympic champion and five-time world champion, Lin Dan a.k.a “Super Dan”, who suffered his ninth first-round exit at the Hong Kong Open last Wednesday, has decided to skip the Chinese Badminton Super League (CBSL) that will be held from December 4, 2018 to Jan 19, 2019.
The badminton’s all-time great has chosen to focus on the winter training to gradually improve his endurance and to strengthen his stamina so that he could get off to a good start in the 2019 season.
“Given the huge number of tournaments in BWF calendar since the 2018 season, it’s really valuable to get a month worth of winter training. I’ll be working with my coaches and supporting staff to focus on improving my physical strength and stamina,” said Lin Dan.
Lin also understood that he is facing an uphill battle to qualify for the Tokyo Olympic.
“Since I did not retire when I was at the peak in 2012, I will fight through this all the way to the end,” added Lin Dan.
Meanwhile, the Rio Olympic champion Chen Long also gave up the opportunity to earn extra cash from playing in the CBSL, instead, he has decided to fully devote himself into the winter training camp, in preparing for the Tokyo Olympics.
“Well! There were a lot of tournaments this year. I want to focus on a very systematically training through the winter training camp,” said Chen.
“I still have a lot of room for improvement, the winter training camp could strengthen my ability from many aspects,” added Chen.
The advantages of the winter training camp are obvious. Badminton players are able to go through systematically training during this time to make up for their own shortcomings and beef up their physical fitness. They will also able to properly adjust their skills and tactics by evaluating their performance of the previous year, so that they can better prepare for the new season. This is especially critical for both Lin Dan and Chen Long as the 2020 Tokyo Olympic qualification period will take place between April 29, 2019 and April 26, 2020, and each country can only send a maximum of two men’s singles players to the Olympics.
