Dubai: The 2020 Tokyo Olympics gold medalist, Viktor Axelsen announced on Sunday that he has just added a new recruit to his training camp in Dubai – the World No. 71 Cheam June Wei of Malaysia.
Axelsen posted the message below on this social media:
“Good training, good times. Thanks guys 👊🏻🏸 .. and welcome to @cheamjunewei 💪🏸
训练很辛苦，但是心情是愉快的，加油！”
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In addition to Cheam, the pictures posted by Axelsen showed that his training camp also consists of several other men’s singles players from around the world, including the reigning World Champion Loh Kean Yew of Singapore (World No. 12), Mark Caljouw (World No. 25) and Joran Kweekel (World No. 92) of Netherlands, Nhat Nguyen of Ireland (World No. 41), and Kalle Koljonen of Finland (World No. 60).
Interestingly, Cheam and Loh have been good buddies since they were young. About 12 years ago, Cheam June Wei and Loh Kean Yew used to partner together and represented the state of Penang to compete at the boys’ doubles Under-12 competition in Malaysia. They won the Under-12 boys’ doubles titles in the National Circuit Grand Prix legs in Ipoh and Alor Setar, before finishing third place at the Grand Finals. Loh then carried the momentum to beat Kedah’s Lee Zii Jia to win the Under-12 boys’ singles title.
Loh earned a scholarship to study and to join his brother at the Singapore Sports School in 2010. On Dec 19, 2021, Loh made history to become the first-ever Singaporean and unseeded player to ever win a BWF World Championships title by beating India’s Kidambi Srikanth 21-15, 22-20 in the final.
