Recently, a surprising news came that young Chinese player Li Yinhui announced his retirement. Twenty-five-year-old Li Yinhui and partner Du Yue have reached the final of the BWF's high-level competition several times in recent years, and they are regarded as the most trusted Chinese women's doubles after the Fan Chen combination.
In an interview with us, Li Yinhui said that the reason for her early retirement was complications caused by pneumonia, coupled with the need for continuous medication for hereditary heart disease. The interview is divided into two parts, the first part is the following:
Having recently received your application for retirement, what prompted you to make this decision at the age of twenty-four?
In fact, I am twenty-five years old this year, and it was very difficult to make this decision. In the months after the Olympic Games, including the National Games, I have been actively conditioning my body. A few years ago, I had a high fever during a competition, so unfortunately I contracted pneumonia and left the root of the disease.
How long has this been going on?
I remember playing in Changzhou at the time, in 2013 or 2014. After that time, my body was not as good as before, because I was not completely cured and I had heart problems, my resting heart rate only jumped thirty-seven times and my heart rate was severely slow, and my recovery was always half a beat slower. So in the back games, including the Olympic points race, I insisted on taking anti-inflammatory drugs under a low fever.
After every intense race and training, I always have this low-grade fever for three or four days. I reached the final of the 2020 All England Open, and then I had a low fever for a week, starting with this in the early days of the NEW CROWN outbreak, and then chronic low blood pressure, which is the result of every physical examination. At that time, until the Olympic Games and the National Games, I always knew my responsibilities and goals, so I kept insisting on not completely curing my physical problems.
As we all know, because of the doping test, athletes are very strict in taking drugs, so when the body has problems, they can only take anti-inflammatory drugs. I persevered until the end of the Olympic Games, I was always looking for a positive way to treat, the leaders and coaches in our team gave me a lot of help, and finally found that there were nodules in the lungs. Coupled with the heart problem mentioned earlier, although the slower the heart beats, the better for athletes, but my beating frequency is slower than that of athletes, which makes my recovery and immune system have a big problem.
In fact, this problem mainly requires long-term medication to condition, so I can only choose to withdraw from the international arena and temporarily leave the national team for a long-term physical conditioning. Later, I may first focus on conditioning my body, but I will only leave the field temporarily.
How are you recovering now?
If you don't do a lot of exercise training, your body is still good. Doctors worry that it will worsen later because the nodules are still flowing. Now I hope to use traditional Chinese medicine to regulate and dissolve, after all, my current age is still in a state of good metabolism.
In fact, I still wanted to continue playing, but because of my health, I had to pause. I think the road of life is still very long, and the body is the first. During this period of conditioning, I felt good in my body, and I don't think there will be too many problems after that.
What are your plans after that? Will you continue your badminton-related career?
Now I want to make a transformation while nourishing my body and slowly integrate into society. I'm not leaving the badminton field at the moment and I'm helping some of the little players in the provincial team.
After that, I will go to the university to engage in badminton education, and promote badminton through some of my own experiences, so that more young people will fall in love with the sport of badminton. I am still a graduate student, and I hope to study more in this process and make up for the previous delays.
(To be continued)