BAM need to take a leaf out of the Danish way

ODENSE: When it comes to strategic and early planning, the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM) can surely pick up one or two pointers from Denmark.

The Danes’ top women’s singles shuttler Tine Baun – a former world No. 1 and two-time All-England champion – announced at the ongoing Denmark Open that she will hang up her racquet after the AllEngland next March.

And yesterday, Denmark BA director of sport Finn Traerup-Hansen revealed to the media their projevt 2016 for girls.

They have identified five youngsters – led by world No. 120 Lene Clausen, who is 21 years old. The others are around that age, with the youngest being 17.

And their goal is to win at least a medal at the European Championships in 2014 and 2016, qualify for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and continue to be a bane to China.

Denmark have always produced top-class women’s singles stars – right from the days of 1977 world champion Lene Koppen to Camilla Martin and Baun.

Traerup-Hansen said that the focus would be on their physical programmes.

“We have enough men’s shuttlers coming though but our struggle is with the women. Firstly, the physical and technical trainers will combine forces to test these project players’ physical training boundaries. This is our top level of talent development programme,” he said.

Traerup-Hansen was Denmark’s national coach from 1993-1995 and spent over 10 years as coaching director of Australia and England before taking up the job as coaching and training supremo with Denmark in 2005.

Under him, Denmark gained their latest breakthrough when they won two medals – a silver and a bronze – at the London Olympic Games.

This is a great achievement for a country of five million people.

Besides physical training, these young shuttlers will also focus on the technical aspect of the game.

“I should have started this last year but our resources were limited and it was the Olympic year. We only have four main coaches in the centre – two full-time and two parttime,” he said.

“It is important that we put this project girls in the limelight from now and set them goals to achieve. It may not be the best environment to develop them but this is the best way to fast track their progress at the highest level. They’ll either survive or sink.”

The Danish BA may have come out with a plan that suits their athletes and culture but what is interesting is that their sports director had put a lot of thought into his plan. It’s not something they came up with after a three-hour meeting.

He had statistics and data of his players that go way back to 2004. All the changes, teachings and tests are documented and the manual is sent to all their clubs so that everyone will be on the same wavelength – from the school to club levels.

They also met up with nine top coaches, including women’s coaches, to find out the behavioural patterns of women athletes and how best to tap their potential.

They also looked at the success of their women’s swimming and handball teams to see how they replenish their pool of talent.

In Malaysia, it has been more than a year since former women’s singles Wong Mew Choo retired but nothing much has been done to attract young talent.

World No. 1 Lee Chong Wei will be retiring soon as well, yet there are no strategic plans to build a solid team for the future.

All we’ve had is talk, talk and more talk.

Hopefully, when the new national coaching director shows up – most likely Park Joo-bong of South Korea – the coaching and training strategies will be drawn up in a more professional way so that BAM can empower all the state BAs to work towards the same target.