The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly turned 2020 into an unprecedented bizarre season for world badminton.
Bai Bai 2020, hello 2021, the badminton new year village is promising a new vitality that is stronger than the previous year. Because at the beginning of this year, badminton will kick off with 3 tournaments, especially one big tournament, the World Tour Finals in Thailand at the end of January.
Next, badminton 2021 continues with the festivals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the World Cup, TOTAL BWF Thomas & Uber Cup Finals, TOTAL BWF Sudirman Cup. All are expected to become an antidote after 2020.
Because badminton has not had a year like 2020. At the beginning of the year at the Malaysia Masters – the first BWF World Tour event, after the men’s and women’s singles titles belonged to Kento Momota and Chen Yu Fei, bad news came. World No. 1 Japanese male almost died in a traffic accident on his way to the airport.
Momota was hospitalized immediately with multiple facial lacerations, right upper jaw sinus fracture and nasal fracture. After returning to Tokyo, he also had to undergo surgery due to a fracture in his right eye socket, so he could not see clearly.
The Indonesia Masters next saw Carolina Marin return after injuring herself a year earlier. However, the Olympic badminton champion’s joy was incomplete due to the defeat of Thai girl Ratchanok Intanon in the final.
In this men’s singles, Anthony Sinisuka Ginting of the host showed outstanding performance when defeating defending champion Anders Antonsen from Denmark.
He used to beat Momota in the final of 2019, but this time, the brave lead soldier could not defeat Ginting to play spotlessly.
Some also have time to enjoy other pleasures such as painting and listening to music. Others are starting to learn new languages …
It was not until the end of the year that badminton was heated up again with small events such as DANISA Danish Open of Super 750 and SaarLorLux Open of Super 100.
However, the influence of COVID-19 is still too obvious such as the referee must wear a mask, or the badminton stars are only interviewed by the media through the glass partition.
Will the badminton look of 2021 be back to normal?
