For Malaysian mixed doubles freelancers Wu Shunfa and Lai Jiemin, beating the Russian duo of Alimov/Elena to reach the top 8 of the French Open is an important affirmation on their way to becoming professional players.
In an interview with the BWF after the game, Lai Jiemin pointed out that the victory was significant because after the Asian Tour in January, their performance was not as good as expected, there were many challenges in finding financial sponsorship and game planning, and the training was affected and the performance was unstable.
Wu Shunfa and Lai Jiemin are among the 16 doubles players trained under Chen Yihui, including Rio Olympic silver medalists Chen Bingqiao and Wu Liuying, Wu Weisheng/Chen Weiqiang, who have turned professional players in 2018, and Chen Jianming and Lai Peijun, who left the national team this year.
Over the years, accustomed to having everything arranged by the national team, from training to flights abroad to accommodation issues, players must quickly adjust and get out of their comfort zone, especially during the epidemic, not only have access to and from home and abroad been restricted, gyms and badminton halls have also had to be closed, making the situation more difficult.
"It's been 7 months since we became free men, we went through 3 months of movement control orders and we weren't allowed to use the stadium. During that time, we could only do physical training, not on the field. It was quite difficult and we had less than two months of preparation before coming here. ”
"You need to be very disciplined, no one controls us, now everything is on our own, so it's up to us, how we control our daily lives, training, funding." It's been good training for us, and now we're learning to handle more stuff, but it's also more difficult. Especially during the epidemic, when it is necessary to submit documents and arrange something. ”
Another free actress, Lai Peijun, also believes that self-discipline is very important for professional players, but it is really difficult to maintain, so she and her partners will remind each other.
Wu Liuying said that although there are many difficulties, as more and more players join the free agent camp, it means that they have the opportunity to get more support, especially government funding.
Liu Juncheng, who started a new partnership with Wu Weisheng, revealed that the current form can help them maintain a high level, although it was difficult to adapt at first, but now it looks stronger. In any case, Lai Believes that being able to freely decide on her own plans will indeed lead to better performances on the field.
"At the moment we have more freedom, but we are still learning. We're trying to adapt to this new position and we have to stay focused because we don't have an umbrella so we need to focus on what we're going to do. 4 of them (Chen Bingqiao, Wu Liuying, Chen Weiqiang, Wu Weisheng) started this team, so the transition period was easier for us. ”
"I hope we can maintain this team so that the players after that have a place to come back, to continue training and to keep playing. We will try to maintain this as much as possible. We have a team spirit and it's great to have a team because we do everything together and there are more people supporting each other. ”