Odd man out: Shi is the only Chinese player coming in as the defending champion.
| Photo Credit: AFP
The Chinese aura is diminishing.
For a formidable machine that churned out winners like clockwork and has had an incredible 72 champions, Shi Yuqi is the only one who will go into the upcoming badminton World championships looking to defend his title.
Shi’s win in Paris last year ended a 10-year barren streak, the previous winner being Chen Long in 2015.
Among the women, the drought has been much longer. Yihan Wang was the last Chinese to win the title way back in 2011. No wonder, most of the queries to the ones here revolved around the pressure of expectations.
“The players of China are very good and large in number. We don’t have pressure of performance as such; it is more about learning from each other and it benefits everyone,” World No. 9 Li Shifeng said on Saturday.
It’s a recurrent theme — the power of numbers, the insistence on lack of pressure and self-belief. But there is no denying the fact that the rest of the world has successfully ended the Chinese chokehold on the sport.
Consider this: China has three women in the top 10 but only two more in top 100. The men fare better, numerically; six in top 50 and eight in top 100.
Chen Yufei has come the closest to breaking the jinx, reaching the World championships finals in two of the last three editions but going down to Akane Yamaguchi both times, including last year. Her most recent outing, at the China Open, again ended in a straight games loss to Yamaguchi.
“I think it is more about ourselves, how we prepare. There is no pressure, only an expectation to do our best. You just need to have faith in yourself and not care about anything else. My biggest obstacle is myself and if I can conquer that, I believe I can win gold,” Yufei said about the missing title in her cabinet.
The red shirts on court are always intimidating. For now, though, the pressure is on them.
Published – August 15, 2026 08:38 pm IST
