James Selvaraj considers London Olympics as an event of psychological warfront
James Selvaraj, the high performance director of Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM), said that London Olympics will be a psychological warfront where all top shuttlers will put in their best effort to earn glory.
Selvaraj said that the field is open for all top contenders and many can prove dark horses as they all have the capabilities of spoiling the party of top shuttlers who are considered as the major contenders for title.
Malaysian shuttlers are currently busy in training sessions at Bath, England and all of them seem in good shape.
Selvaraj said that the national team is working really hard in training and he expects that all other top shuttlers from different countries must also be working hard to live up to expectations at the mega event.
However, he also expressed that besides the top shuttlers, many lower ranked players can also shine on the occasion by beating any of the top players.
He particularly mentioned the names of two promising Japanese shuttlers including Sho Sasaki and Kenichi Tago who are placed at number seven and eight positions respectively in Men’s Singles world ranking.
He stated, “Our players are training hard but so are their opponents. And, right now, there is no saying who will even be in the final. Who knows, maybe (Kenichi) Tago or (Sho) Sasaki might even prove to be spoilers in the tournament.”
Rashid Sidek, the national singles coach also said that apart from the Lin Dan, Lee Chong Wei and Chen Long who are the top three shuttlers in world ranking, many other players from Indonesia and Japan and Denmark will also be dangerous.
He added, “Right now, besides Chong Wei, Lin Dan and Chen Long, the other top players will be those from Japan and Indonesia. Then, there is also Peter-Gade Christensen, who has never won an Olympic medal ... we can’t discount him from springing a surprise.”
Many experienced players like Taufik Hidayat, Peter Hoeg Gade, Sasaki, Tago and Simon Santoso have the ability to give a good fight to all seeded shuttlers in the mega event.
According to the experts, there is no player in Men’s Singles category who could be declared as a clear favourite for gold medal as the skill gap is quite narrow among all Olympic qualifiers and it can be anybody’s game on the given day.
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