Can we really shed tears over badminton?
Author: Giles Smith - The Times
Date: 14 Aug 2008
Category: Articles
Emotional scenes at the badminton. And let’s face it, it’s not every day you get to say that. But Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson were blown off the court in the quarter-finals by a gifted but (if you don’t mind me saying so) extremely shouty South Korean couple, and, asked in the immediate aftermath to confirm her retirement, Emms was abruptly overcome by tears and unable to speak. We’ll take that as a “yes”, though. See what you’ve done, Lee and Lee, with your devious low serves and your shouting?
“Thank you for the memories,” David Mercer said, in a thick-voiced, elegiac mode in the commentary box. “There are so many of them.” Absolutely. Emms and Robertson have done more than any pair alive to grab British badminton by the shuttlecock and drag it out of the back garden. And maybe they never quite reached the front gate with it, let alone got as far as the main road, but you can hardly accuse them of not trying.
The BBC man also ruefully noted how quickly the Korean pair had taken the knife to the nation’s dreams of mixed doubles glory: “Thirty-seven minutes it took to break British hearts.” Heartbroken? You know what, I think I’m going to be OK, actually, David. I thought briefly about going up to my room and refusing to come down. But in the end, sad though it was, this didn’t quite seem to be the occasion.