Do you know ... these badminton facts s?
> Strange but true – Denmark has a men’s singles world champion every 20 years. Flemming Delfs won the inaugural World Badminton Championships in Malmo 1977. Peter Rasmussen pulled it off in Glasgow 1997. And this year, Viktor Axelsen won in Glasgow.
Will Denmark have to wait two decades for its next world champ? > Park Joo-bong won the world title as a player and guided another to victory as a coach in Japan.
This year, his charge Nozomi Okuhara beat India’s P. V. Sindhu in a 110-minute marathon women’s singles final. The South Korean himself won five world titles: in men’s doubles (with Kim Moon-soo, 1985 and 1991); and mixed doubles (Yoo Sang-hee, 1985; Chung Myunghee, 1989 and 1991).
> Datuk Misbun Sidek is one of f the first Malay sians to win a medal at the World Champ pionships, baggin ng a bronze with youngery brothe er Jalani in the me en’s double es in Jakartaa in 198 80. > China’s Zhang Nan is the only player to win two events at the World Championships and Olympic Games. His first men’s doubles world title came in Glasgow with Liu Cheng this year. He has three mixed doubles world titles with Zhao Yunlei (2011, 2014 and 2015). At last year’s Rio Olympics, he won the men’s doubles gold with Fu Haifeng and defended the mixed doubles title with Zhao Yunlei.
> Naturalised US players Howard Bach-Tony Gunawan pulled off the biggest surprise at the 2005 Anaheim World Championships by winning the men’s doubles. It’s the first and, so far, only title for the United States in the world series. > Among the most watched matches of the championships were the men’s singles finals between China’s Lin Dan and Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei (Wembley 2011 and Guangzhou 2013). Lin Dan won both.