Beijing: Even though China’s Rio Olympics men’s singles gold medalist Chen Long hasn’t made an official announcement about his retirement from badminton yet, his name and ranking have been removed from the latest Badminton World Federation (BWF) rankings published on October 4, 2022.
As soon as Chen makes an official announcement either by himself or through the Chinese Badminton Association, that would mark the official end of the Chen Long era.
The 33-year-old concluded his decorated career with a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. He also won gold in the 2016 Rio Olympics and bronze in the 2012 London Olympics. The 2-time world champion (2014, 2015) started a semi-retired life after the Tokyo Olympics. The reason he didn’t retire after the Tokyo Games was to wait and hope to play his last tournament at the 2022 Asian Games. The 2022 Asian Games were originally scheduled to take place in Hangzhou, China from September 10 to September 25, 2022. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was postponed to September 23 – October 8, 2023, and Chen obviously couldn’t wait that long for his retirement.
Chen Long has always been compared with Lin Dan since he was selected to join the China badminton first team in 2008. He won his first professional title in the 2009 Philippines Open Grand Prix Gold event, beating Hu Yun of Hong Kong in the final. He then went on to win 3 Thomas Cup titles (2010, 2012, 2018) and 5 Sudirman Cup (2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2019) trophies and 2010, 2018 Asian Games men’s team events with the Chinese badminton team.
For individual tournaments, in addition to the Olympics and the World Championships, he also won the 2017 Asian Championships men’s singles title.
After more than ten years together, Chen married former World No. 1 women’s singles player Wang Shixian in 2017 and their first child was born in June 2019.
Chen should be considered one of the most underrated players in badminton. He received very minimal publicity for winning the Olympics and the World Championships. He has accomplished so much over his career, and the badminton fans are sure going to miss him deeply.
