The next Olympic games takes place in 2016, nevertheless China already started preparing for the world’s greatest sports event.
At this year’s Yonex Denmark Open China is testing new men’s double constellations.
The Olympic Champions and former World Champions, Fu Haifeng and Cai Yun, have been split up and are now playing with two young compatriots.
Cai Yun and his new partner Chai Biao Thursday managed to win their match against another Chinese pair, All England Champions Liu Xiaolong/Qiu Zihan, 22-20/21-14, even though the new constellation hasn’t been training together more than a couple of times.
“The coaches want to try something new regarding the Olympics in 2016”, Cai Yun explains.
“They think, that me and Fu Haifeng maybe have some difficulties regarding the next Olympics. We have the same age and have played together for a long time, so to bring in more energy and power in the game, the coaches want to see if it’s better for me to play with Chai Biao, who’s much younger than me”, Cai Yun says.
Yonex Denmark Open is Cai Yun and Chai Biaos first tournament together. Cai Yun still doesn’t know for how long he is going to play with his new partner, but for sure the next couple of big international tournaments.
They haven’t made any specific goals for this tournament.
“It’s the first time, so we just want to play and see how it turns out”, the double specialist says.
Tomorrow they are facing third seed Hiroyuko Endo and Kenichi Hayakawa from Japan.
China, the world’s greatest badminton nation, is known for focusing intensively on winning Olympic medals.