Lee Chong Wei offers his services to groom future national campaigners – Badminton News
It seems the badminton ace Lee Chong Wei is fully aware of the fact that there is huge gap after him as he showed intentions to help Badminton Association of Malaysia to produce new world beaters for the future.
The 29-year-old Chong Wei has raised his country’s flag all over the world but now he is likely to bid farewell to the arena in the next couple of years.
This puts a big question mark on Malaysia’s badminton future as no other shuttler has proved himself the eligible successor of two-time Olympic silver medallist.
Probably, this was the main reason behind Chong Wei’s decision to shoulder his responsibility until 2014 as he declared while showing intentions to play his part in grooming of junior shuttlers.
He said, "I have discussed the matter with my coaches and Badminton Association of Malaysia and they will be doing their best to produce new talent."
BAM has already launched a four-year programme under High Performance Team and the national body is also giving consideration to the idea of a talent hunt across the country.
At the moment, Malaysia’s back-up squad includes Daren Liew, Wei Feng Chong, Chan Kwong Beng, Mohd Arif Abdul Latif, Misbun Ramdan Misbun and Iskandar Zulkarnain Zainuddin.
There are many other shuttlers like Junior World Champion Zulfadli Zulkiffli who are not under BAM’s banner and compete as independent players.
The maestro Chong Wei proposed to gather all these young shuttlers in a central training camp where they will have chance to elevate their craft while training with seniors. He volunteered himself to help them in their transition period.
He said, "There may be a training group formed to develop the younger players where I, as a senior player, will encourage and groom these junior players."
Earlier, the national body took an unusual step by sending Daren and Kwong Beng as sparring partners in Bath training camp for London Olympics.
Chong Wei appreciated this move and hoped that these youngsters will utilise the experience to show elevated skills in future badminton events.
Both shuttlers are scheduled to participate in Vietnam Open and Indonesia Open Grand Prix Gold next month.
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