Badminton’s time to shine

BADMINTON: In New Zealand, badminton is regarded a minority sport – but don’t be fooled.

More than 1.1 billion people watched badminton’s Olympic debut in 1996 and many reports have badminton as the second most popular participatory sport in the world, just behind football.

The racket sport is massive with the Asian markets lapping up badminton both on a participation and viewer basis.

Impressively there is a bloke based in Invercargill playing a key role in helping foster those numbers.

Nigel Skelt is better known in the deep south of New Zealand as the Stadium Southland general manager.

But by night he holds another role, a more important role as far as the global stage goes.

Skelt is on the Badminton World Federation Council and is also the chair for Badminton World Federation marketing team.

He leaves on Friday for the Olympics Games where he hopes badminton can enhance its reputation as a leading sport on the world stage.

Skelt’s key task in Rio will be host any dignities who turn up to watch the badminton.

It is a role he also was involved with in London in 2012.

In London, he had the opportunity to host Prince Andrew and Lord Sebastian Coe, who was then president of the London Olympics organising committee and is the president of International Athletics.

‘‘On any given day we could have any member of the International Olympic Committee arrive so we’ve got to be geared up for that. There is a lot of security around it, we get a very late window of time to know.

‘‘For example, when Sebastian Coe came in in London with his crew we only got around about half an hour notice.’’

The World Badminton Federation was eyeing the 2016 Olympics as an ideal to grow the sport in South America, Skelt said.

It makes his marketing role really important for the sport.

‘‘It’s about us promoting our sport at every level really. We’ve had a very long marketing campaign in Rio, we’ve been on the ground there for the best part of two years now.

‘‘We’ve had fan activations in the weekends at caravan parks, at the beaches and on the street corners promoting the game, because it is a new game to South America.

‘‘For badminton South America is a sleeping giant, so we are going to create the beach game as well. We are already getting good leverage on that, we are playing badminton on Copacabana Beach.’’

The badminton will run from August 11 through to August 20 and Skelt expects to be very busy through out that time.

However, he was also looking forward to squeezing in some time to watch other sports as well.

‘‘It’s the pinnacle event as far as sportsmen and sportswomen in the world. It is just a fantastic opportunity really to get to see them up close,’’ Skelt said.

‘‘I’ve got the family going over as well and they are incredibly excited by it.

‘‘Last time we got to the opening ceremony but this time we are getting to both the opening and closing ceremony.’’