Sportblog | The Guardian — Badminton RSS

Jun 26, 2017

WTF, FML and a brief history of sporting initialisms and acronyms

The World Taekwondo Federation has finally rebranded but it is far from the only sporting entity to cause controversy with an initialism or abbreviationThe World Taekwondo Federation did the inevitable last weekend, changing its name to escape the “negative connotations” of its initialism.World Taekwondo, as it is now officially known, first considered changing its name in 2015 but decided to give it another 18 months before accepting that the ubiquitous online abbreviation was going nowhere. The new slogan? It is “Taekwondo For All”. Thanks for asking. Related: Forget dancing horses, surfing and BMX – the Olympic Games need eSports Continue reading...

Feb 21, 2017

Sports are cut adrift in the drive for British Olympic medals | Sean Ingle

With the funding body coming under increasing financial pressure, sports failing its podium test are being made to pay a heavier priceWhen Gail Emms was asked about UK Sport’s decision to reject the desperate pleas of seven sports, including GB Badminton, to be funded for the Tokyo Olympics, she was poetic in her response. “It’s like someone just taking your heart, your emotions, your dreams and basically tearing them up,” said Emms, a badminton silver medallist at the 2004 Olympics, with a sigh.But UK Sport has a tin ear for poetry. Its language is cold, hard, medal-economics. Once it had decided in December that badminton – along with archery, fencing, goal ball, table tennis, weightlifting and wheelchair rugby – had...