Sport Focus: 12 Things You Didn't Know About Badminton
December 3, 2019
Consistently in the medals in recent years, Team Scotland has a proud history in Badminton at the Commonwealth Games. To round off our Sport Focus, here are 12 things you might not know about Badminton:
- Badminton is a core sport at the Commonwealth Games and must be included every time the Games are held.
- Badminton is the second most popular participation sport in the world after football.
- The sport made its Commonwealth Games debut at Kingston in 1966.
- Scotland have won ten Commonwealth Games medals in Badminton – one gold, two silver and seven bronze.
- Scotland have won medals in Badminton at five out of the last six Games, the exception being Delhi 2010. Elinor Middlemiss & Sandra Watt took Women’s Doubles bronze in 1998, there was a Mixed Team bronze in 2002, Susan Hughes reached the Women’s Singles podium with bronze in 2006 and there was double success at Glasgow 2014 as Robert Blair & Imogen Bankier took Mixed Doubles bronze and Kirsty Gilmour took Women’s Singles silver before going on to take bronze at Gold Coast 2018.
- Scotland’s only gold in Badminton to date came at the 1986 Games in Edinburgh where Billy Gilliland and Dan Travers won the Men’s Doubles.
- England and Malaysia’s domination of the Team Event at the Commonwealth Games was ended by India at Gold Coast 2018. The two nations had won all 10 events previously held between them, but in 2018 India beat Malaysia 3-1 in the final to win gold.
- A shuttlecock is make from cork, leather and 16 goose feathers. The best shuttlecocks are made with feathers from the left wing!
- Badminton is the fastest racket sport with the shuttlecock reaching speeds of over 200mph.
- Badminton was originally known as “Battledore & Shuttlecock”
- The name Badminton comes from the place of the birth of the British game – at the country estate of the Duke of Beaufort in Gloucestershire in 1873.
- On 24 November 2019 Alex Dunn and Adam Hall became the first Scottish pair to win the Men’s Doubles title at the Scottish Open for 36 years. Billy Gilliland and Dan Travers, the last Scots to hold the trophy aloft back in 1983, went on to become Scotland’s only Commonwealth Games Badminton gold medallists to date.