Women shuttlers change the script with fourth Games appearances

LONDON : Conventional wisdom dictates that the average retirement age for elite women players in the intense and physically demanding sport of badminton is well under 30 years old.

Five women shuttlers are set to turn that on its head, however, when they make their fourth Olympic appearances at the Paris Games, a feat never accomplished before.

Taiwan's Tai Tzu Ying, 30, Thailand's Ratchanok Intanon, 29, Belgium's Lianne Tan, 33, Hong Kong's Tse Ying Suet and Canada's Michelle Li, both 32, will compete for Olympic glory at Porte de La Chapelle Arena from July 27 to Aug. 5.

"These achievements get missed because they're women," said Nora Perry, twice world champion and a council member of the Badminton World Federation (BWF).

"It's not taken as seriously. When men do something extraordinary, it's celebrated and comes out on front pages."

Women have had to fight tooth-and-nail to compete at the Olympics, and some sports and events were barred to them even as recently as the Tokyo Games.

Badminton has done well in comparison on the gender equality front, with Indonesia's Susi Susanti beating South Korean shuttler Bang Soo-hyun to singles gold when it first became a medal sport at the Barcelona Games in 1992.

Four years later, in Atlanta, women shuttlers were pitted against men in mixed doubles matches, something tennis had yet to do at the time.

The Paris Games will be the first to feature an equal number of men and women athletes, but even in badminton, the relationship between the federation and women shuttlers has not always been smooth sailing.

RULE CHANGE

Ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, officials at the BWF drew criticism after imposing a rule requiring women players to wear skirts to make the sport more "feminine" and