Hans-Kristian Vittinghus: Thoughts about the 2017 World Championships

Maak kennis met Liam Birahy!

Nozomi Okuhara and PV Sindhu gave us a 110-minute thriller final that without the slightest doubt in my mind, goes down in history as the greatest women's singles match ever played. That 70+ shot, 1 minute and 18 seconds long rally at 21-20 in the second game was just mindblowing.

By far the most entertaining match of these championships.

And Okuhara made it even more memorable by conducting her live on-court winners interview in English - even with a translater standing right next to her if she wanted to do it in Japanese. She even managed to answer with a fair bit of humour as well. Well done Nozomi, well done!

We are surely in the middle of a golden age for women's singles. So many talented players, from so many different countries and with different playing styles. And most of them are incredibly young too!

Men's singles

Having trained alongside and with Viktor Axelsen over the past 6-7 weeks it shouldn't really come as a surprise that he became World Champion this week. He has looked insanely good in many of the training sessions. After he gave me a huge beating some weeks ago I even told our coach he would be World Champion if he could reproduce that level.

But I still have to admit - I didn't expect him to!

What a way to do it, by beating, no sorry completely tearing apart, Chen Long and Lin Dan two days in a row.

Viktor is now the defending champion at India Open, Superseries Finals, Thomas Cup and the World Championships. Can I just remind you all that he is only 23.

With his dedication, there is no limit. He deserves it all and I'm full of respect for what he is doing - and how he is doing it. Second to none.

In general:

I wanted to write something about the doubles as well. But my head can't take anymore. I'm probably one of the biggest badminton lovers there are, but finals day was almost 8 hours of non-stop badminton. 8 hours! It simply too much. I had to turn off the TV for the men's doubles.

It's a problem. It really is. No one can keep up the excitement for that long. Commentators, spectators, TV-viewers, coaches and players. It's wearing us all down.

This is the World Championships we are talking about. All the finals deserve great attention.

Wouldn't it be an idea to add a day extra or perhaps two? This way we could split up the finals on several days - just like BWF did at the Olympics, which in my opinion worked extremely well.

Final thoughts:

The World Championships is BWFs biggest annual event. BWF are making more and more cash from TV- and sponsorship deals. Our sport is clearly growing. BWF are aggressively pushing the biggest tournaments to up the prize money constantly.

So if you are now reading this and wondering how much money our new World Champions won today, the answer is shocking:

$0.

It just weird.

Anyway,
Glasgow 2017 is now history. But what a history it turned out to be. Thanks to those who made it possible. I personally didn't play as big a part as I wanted to. But I still enjoyed this Championships a lot. Badminton is my sport. I love it with all of my heart. Today did nothing to change that fact. Even with all the flaws badminton also has.