China’s badminton ace Lin Dan will defend his title at the All-England badminton championships, which will begin in Birmingham from March 9-14, without his coach Tang Xianhu.
The 67-year-old coach, who was nicknamed The Thing as a player between 1961 and 1975 before turning to coaching in the early 80s, has returned to Fuzhou in Fujian province for rest due to an illness.
The coach even produced world-class men’s singles players like Xia Xuanze and Ji Xinpeng between 1999 and 2004. He came out of retirement in 2007 to coach and help Lin Dan win the gold medal in the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Xianhu is expected to be out of the Chinese national team for a year and he has already come up with a training plan for his successor Li Zhifeng to help Lin Dan maintain his winning ways.
Although Lin Dan will be without his mentor for the All-England, which is his first international competition of the year, the three-time world champion said his training programme with his new coach had been going well.
“I have not seen coach Tang for a while as he has taken leave to have some rest in Fuzhou. He is getting older and needs to take some time to recover,” Lin Dan told sports.cn at his training base here on Tuesday.
“Every coach has his own approach towards the game. He (Zhifeng) will have to spend more time to understand me. As preparations for the London Olympics 2012 have just started, we still have time to adapt to the new partnership.”
Lin Dan skipped the season-opener Korean Open and Malaysian Open to focus on the centennial All-England, which he had won four times.
“The All-England this year will not be more special than the previous ones. There are many more major tournaments this year, including the Thomas Cup, World Championships and Asian Games, and the All-England is just part of our plan,” he said.
“I will just try to do my best. Based on the draw, I may have to play against my compatriots Bao Chunlai in the quarter-finals and Chen Jin in the semi-finals. So, I don’t have too much expectations.”
On arch-rival Lee Chong Wei’s determined bid to maintain his world number one ranking this season, Lin Dan said it would be an enviable achievement if Chong Wei could do that.
“He is certainly a very outstanding player in men’s singles. I think he is the best,” Lin Dan said.
