I wish this had happened before I turned in this this week’s story about badminton. I mean, I don’t wish one player had his ear ripped open by a badminton racket, then chased a former parter around the gym before tackling him and smacking the shit out of him on camera.
But it gets to my point that badminton can be much more than the cocktail-in-one-hand, lazy-summer lawn game that people make it out to be. In fact, the earliest accounts of badminton’s most probable ancestor come from the ancient Chinese military chronicle Zhan Guo Ce, or Strategies of the Warring States.
A game that hinges on a five-gram feathered object—did you know good shuttlecocks are made from only the left wings of geese and ducks?—sounds gentle. And it can be. But it can also get vicious out there.
One more piece of trivia: Did you know that a few years ago, Olympic badminton player Lee Yong-dae smashed a shuttlecock so hard it cracked a watermelon? See for yourself:
