In a virtual press conference on Thursday, Badminton World Federation (BWF) emphasised on continuing badminton events in 2020, keeping everyone’s safety in mind during the Covid pandemic.
BWF President Poul-Erik Hoyer, Deputy President Khunying Patama Leeswadtrakul and Secretary General Thomas Lund answered a range of questions during BWF’s first such virtual interaction.
When asked why BWF had chosen to conduct the Asian leg in January 2021 and not in November 2020, Lund charted the complexity of the process.
“We had planned the European leg which included the TOTAL BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals and two Denmark Opens in October. At the same time we announced we would plan an Asian leg. Setting up that level of events is a complex and big exercise. Simply due to time constraints, we are not able to conduct it before January, which was found to be the best time to get the logistical arrangements in place.”
Mentioning that badminton faces challenges of a vastly different scale, Lund said, “The challenges are not as big if you don’t have to cross so many national borders. In our normal tournament structure, we have 300 to 400 players coming from 40 to 60 countries. The big challenge here is that we need them getting out of their countries, and then getting in to the host countries, with quarantine restrictions and so on, which are being dealt differently in different places. That creates a complexity in getting that many people together in one location. That’s what we are trying to bridge by creating this cluster in Thailand, where we can play a number of tournaments in the same location.”
BWF also hinted that they may continue to adopt the cluster model for the start of the 2021 season.
That could mean some tournaments that are part of Tokyo Olympics qualification, including the Malaysian Open next April, could be bunched together with other events and played in a selected country.
Race to Tokyo is scheduled to resume early next year with 24 Badminton tournaments that were postponed, due to Covid-19 this year, will be completed by May 2.
BWF have also vowed to make the three Asian legs of the World Tour in Bangkok in January a success in order for it to become the blueprint.
“We are looking at whether we can replicate that into further clusters in 2021. That’s part of the exercise we’re going through at the moment. This could be a blueprint on how we can conduct tournaments in an Asian leg, and how we can move that on in further cluster tournaments. But there are financial complexities that we are working to get through,” said Lund.
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