As the year draws to a close, the Chinese badminton team, which is in winter training, is actively using this rare time to recuperate and recharge for the new year. During the winter training period, the doubles team focused on trying more combination pairings and exploring more possibilities at the beginning of the Olympic cycle in Paris.
Short cycles and heavy tasks
The COVID-19 pandemic has extended the Tokyo Olympic cycle to five years, the Paris Olympic cycle to three years, and the end of 2021 has been filled with competitions, so it can be said that the Paris Olympic cycle really began in 2022. In the past, the year in the middle of the Olympic cycle was usually regarded as a mid-term examination, and each team at this time has experienced more than a year of alternating and exploring the old and the new. But now that we have just entered a new cycle, every team in the world badminton world is about to face the "middle school entrance examination".
Whoever can take the lead in the preparation rhythm of the new cycle may take the lead. For doubles, whoever can take the lead in finding a better combination and echelon structure will be able to deploy earlier for the new Olympic points race.
After the Tokyo Olympics, with the retirement of Li Junhui, Han Chengkai and other doubles main players, the national doubles team encountered the problem of a reduction in fixed combinations. Especially in the Su Cup and The Soup Cup, the National Feather Men's Doubles Group frequently uses temporary combinations. Before the World Championships, everyone was busy participating, isolating, recovering, preparing, and had no time to adjust. After returning from the World Championships and ending the isolation of the large troops, the entire national feather has entered the winter training period, which is the best time to deploy and adjust.
Men's doubles recombination, women's doubles mixed doubles new and old parallel
Huang Zhanzhong, the head coach of the men's doubles team, said that the men's doubles team has recently undergone a large-scale restructuring and tried to pair up new combinations. The world championship silver medal duo He Jiting / Tan Qiang will try with the new pair to form two new pairs of He Jiting / Zhou Haodong and Tan Qiang / Ren Xiangyu respectively; Liu Yuchen, who lacked a partner due to the retirement of his old partner Li Junhui, will be paired with Ou Xuanyi, who also has a height advantage; Zhang Nan / Liu Cheng, the men's doubles champion of the 2017 Glasgow World Championships, will join forces again to give a go to the next Olympic Games.
Compared with the large-scale restructuring of men's doubles, women's doubles and mixed doubles will be explored on the basis of the original combination. Women's doubles coach Tao Jiaming introduced that the duo of Chen Qingchen/Jia Yifan and Liu Xuanxuan/Xia Yuting will remain unchanged; Li Yinhui will not participate in the subsequent competition due to physical reasons, Du Yue and Li Wenmei will play in combination, and Zheng Yu and Zhang Shuxian will be partnered. Yang Ming, the head coach of the mixed doubles group, also revealed that Zheng Siwei and Huang Yaqiong will make temporary adjustments according to the team plan, and will try to form a new combination with the young players in the next few competitions.
Due to the large number of tentative new combinations, the doubles team focused on improving the run-in and tacit understanding between the new partners during the winter training, so that the new combinations gradually formed new technical characteristics. Several coaches have stressed that the new combinations are tentative and exploratory, and they will be tested in the next few European competitions, and we can expect what new sparks they will make.
(An editorial excerpt from the February 2022 issue of Badminton)