Meng YeanMei Kuan hope BAM will let them fight for Olympic spot

KUALA LUMPUR: National doubles shuttlers Lee Meng YeanChow Mei Kuan want to carry on their quest to qualify for next year’s Olympic Games without any interruption.

And they hope the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) will not make any drastic changes until then.

The BAM are expected to revamp the national team, especially the women’s doubles and singles department and all their players’ coaches are expected to come under review in December under Project ‘24.

The women’s doubles is currently coached by Rosman Razak.

Meng Yean-Mei Kuan broke into the world top 20 in 2018 and are currently ranked 15th in the world. Their best is 13th in the world.

They have played 16 tournaments this year and the two significant results were a runner-up finish at the Indian Open in March and quarter-finals at the Spain Masters in February.

In the last two tournaments in Denmark and France, they went down to lower ranked pairs – world No. 16 Puttita SupajirakulSapsiree Taerattanachai of Thailand and world No. 33 Hsu Ya-ching-Hu Ling-fang of Taiwan respectively.

The national women’s doubles badminton team have been under a lot of scrutiny of late and talk is rampant that changes need to be made in the department.

Meng Yean admitted that they have struggled to make a mark in the international stage while pairs from Japan, China, Indonesia and Thailand have continued to make huge progress.

“Our performance has not been really good in the last two tournaments but we continue to see ourselves improving in every tournament,” said Meng Yean.

“We don’t think our partnership has stagnated.

“We believe there are more room for improvement and are excited to see how far we can go together.”

“So I hope that BAM will continue to have faith in us and let us fight until the Olympics. As it is, we are in a good position to qualify for Tokyo as we are in the 11th place.”

Only 16 pairs qualify for the Olympic Games when the one year qualifying period ends on April 30.

“As players, we too have dreams to compete in at least one Olympics in our lifetime,” said Meng Yean.

“And we really hope that our coach Rosman will remain with us because he has helped us grow so much as a pair, we need his guidance until the Olympics and even further.

“But we can’t stop BAM from making changes.

“If they do, we’ll continue to keep our focus on qualifying for the Olympics.”