Badminton
History
Not very popular in Brazil, Badminton is a mixture of beach volleyball and tennis. The sport is played with a shuttlecock and a racket and no one knows where it comes from. Nevertheless, the sport, as it is known today, started out in India. Badminton is derived directly from Poona and it was taken to Europe in the 19th century by British officers, who had played the sport while stationed in India.
In the 1870s, already in England, a new set of rules was developed for Poona, which began to be played at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of Beaufort. As a result, it was renamed Badminton.
After being disseminated in other countries in the following decades, those practicing the sport organised themselves and founded the International Badminton Federation in 1934 (known as the Badminton World Federation today – BWF), headquartered in Gloucestershire. At the beginning there were nine member nations: Canada, Denmark, Scotland, France, The Netherlands, England, New Zealand and Wales.
Badminton would only become an Olympic sport (when athletes started competing for medals) recently. Indeed, it was at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, when Indonesia shone, with Susi Susanti winning the gold for the ladies and Allan Budi Kusuma bringing home the gold in the men’s. In the men’s doubles, the gold was won by Kim Moon-soo and Park Joo-bong from South Korea.
In Brazil, badminton only became a competitive sport in 1983, when the first edition of the São Paulo Cup was held. However, the Brazilian Badminton Confederation would only be founded ten years later, in 1993. Today, the body has 15 affiliated federations. The World Federation in turn has 179 member nations.
The sport was part of the Mar del Plata Pan American Games in 1995 in Argentina and has featured in all editions of the competition since then. At the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, Brazil finally won their first medal in the sport, with Guilherme Kumasaka and Guilherme Pardo scooping up the bronze in the men's doubles. As Brazil has never qualified to play Badminton at the Olympics, the country will makes its debut at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Curiosities
US$ 200 thousand
The gold medal won by Susi Susanti and her boyfriend Allan Budi Kusuma in the women's and men's singles at the Barcelona Games in 1992, made them national heroes in their home country. Indonesia had taken part in the Olympics since 1952, but had never won a gold medal before. Therefore, when they returned home with two gold medals in their luggage, they came home to a hero’s welcome, parading in an open-top car for two hours. To make it all even better, they were each given a US$ 200 thousand prize.
300km/h
Badminton is the world's fastest racquet sport. While in tennis the fastest serve ever recorded was of 163km/h (by Australian Samuel Groth), in badminton, the speed at which the shuttlecock flies at in a professional game may be over 300km/h.
