Seoul: Kang Kyung-Jin, former head coach of Korea would be signing a contract on September 3rd to join the coaching staff for the Chinese national badminton team as China’s doubles coach.
As reported by Donga Ilbo of Korea, this was a historic turnabout by the badminton superpower China after they suffered their worst results in the recently concluded World Championships by only advancing to the final of one category and then winning one title.
For the record, China have never hired a foreign coach to join their national badminton team, but now, they are counting on Kang Kyung-Jin to revive their doubles department and help strengthening and preparing the China badminton for the 2020 Olympic Games.
The Chinese Badminton Association decided to hire Kang perhaps based on three factors below: first, Kang was a men’s doubles player himself, he won the 1997 All England title; secondly, he enjoyed a good reputation in developing doubles players; and lastly, he also has a strong individual coaching ability.
In the past few years, Korean coaches have made huge impact on the world badminton scene as former Olympic gold medalist Park Joo Bong has led the Japanese team to overtake China to be the strongest country in badminton, especially in men’s singles and women’s doubles. At the same time, Korean coach Kim Ji-hyun, also helped India’s women’s singles player PV Sindhu to win a historic gold at the BWF World Championships two weeks ago.
As for Kang Kyung-Jin, after he became the Korean badminton head coach in December 2016, he and the Korean team pulled of a huge upset by beating China in the 2017 Sudirman Cup final to win the BWF World Mixed Championships.
However, after failing to win a medal in the 2018 Asian Games, Kang Kyung-Jin, Kim Ji-hyun and 5 other coaches were subsequently fired by the Badminton Korea Association through text messages.
