The BWF announced the results of the 2020-2021 awards last weekend, with the Tokyo Olympic champions from other countries and regions on the list, and only China's Chen Yufei, Wang Yilu and Huang Dongping, the three Tokyo Olympic champions, were not selected. Among them, Chen Yufei's failure to win the best female athlete of the year is the most controversial.
Photo: The BWF announces the results of the 2020-2021 awards
Wang Yilu did not name the best male athlete in reason. Denmark's Arcelor has dominated the crowd in the past two years, participating in 11 competitions during the judging cycle, including 10 finalists and 7 championships, including winning the men's singles gold medal in badminton at the Tokyo Olympics. Wang Yilu/Huang Dongping also lost the best doubles combination, compared with Chinese Taipei's Li Yang/Wang Qilin, who won the Tokyo Olympic men's doubles championship, and Pauli/Lahayu of Indonesia, the Tokyo Olympic women's doubles champion, Wang Yilu/Huang Dongping competed too few times during the epidemic, so the number of victories was not as good as them. There is no controversy that Polly/Lahayu was voted the best combination of the year, and li yang and Wang Qilin won the fastest progress award.
What caused dissatisfaction among Chinese fans was that the best female athlete award eventually fell into the hands of Chinese Taipei's Dai Ziying. Because no matter from the results of the competition or the number of times she won the open championship, Dai Ziying could not compare with Chen Yufei.
Pictured: Four candidates for the BWF Female Athlete of the Year
The BWF's judging period is from 1 November 2019 to 31 October 2021. During this time, Chen Yufei won the Olympic women's singles title and was the main winner of the Sudirman Cup and the Uber Cup. In addition, she won the 2019 Fuzhou Open Badminton Championships, the 2019 Hong Kong Badminton Open, the 2019 BWF Tour Finals and the 2020 Malaysia Badminton Masters Women's Singles Championship.
In these two years, Dai Ziying has only won the women's singles title in the 2020 BWF Tour Finals and the 2020 All England Open. He also lost to Chen Yufei at the Tokyo Olympics.
Compared with Dai Ziying, who won 7 championships (including the team), Chinese fans have cried out for Chen Yufei.
Pictured: Chen Yufei's defeat has caused controversy
See what the BWF has to say. Their speech reads: Dai Ziying won the 2020 All England Open championship and won three races in the Asian season in January 2021, all of which reached the finals, and finally won the finals and two open runners-up. In addition, she reached the final at the Tokyo Olympics and played a wonderful match with Chen Yufei.
Among them, in fact, it is not obvious that Dai Ziying is better than Chen Yufei in the past two years.
If you must find a reason for Dai Ziying's selection as the best athlete of the year, it can only be said that Dai Ziying has participated more times than Chen Yufei this year, and this year's overall results are the best among all women's singles players. Due to the impact of the epidemic, Chen Yufei only participated in the olympic games this year, which may be an important reason why she did not finally award the best of the year.
Photo: Tokyo Olympics women's singles final, Chen Yufei defeated Dai Ziying Xinhua News Agency
In addition, Dai Ziying can occupy the world ranking for a long time in these two years, indicating that even if she does not win the championship many times, she is very high in the ranking of each race, that is, she can often reach the final and the final four.
Judging from the BWF's selection of the best of the year, there is precedent for the Olympic champion of the year not to be named the best of the year. For example, the best male athlete in 2016 is not the Olympic champion Chen Long, but the Olympic runner-up of the year, Malaysia's Li Zongwei. The results of the BWF Open Tournaments have also been an important reference for the selection of the best of the year.
It is indeed a bit of a pity for the Chinese badminton team that there is no grain in the annual best selection, but the achievements of the Chinese team this year are still obvious to all. The Tokyo Olympic Games won two gold, four silver and the Su Cup You Cup consecutively, allowing the Chinese badminton team to return to the status of the world's number one team. (Xinmin Evening News reporter Wang Zhiling)