BWF has yet again landed in trouble. It is under fire from a number of top players including Olympic silver medallists Goh Liu Ying and Chan Peng Soon.
The ongoing 2021 European Championships will award valuable Olympic qualification points to the players participating in the tournament, while its counterpart 2021 Asian Championships remains postponed. The disparity gives an advantage to European players over Asian players in the qualification race to Tokyo.
A number of Asian players raised the issue on their social media accounts yesterday and have demanded a solution from the BWF.
Goh Liu Ying, Chan Peng Soon, Lai Pei Jing, Shevon Jemie Lai, Goh Soon Huat, Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja, Hafiz Faizal and Lee Cheuk Yiu published the same post on their social media accounts.
Their message to the BWF reads, “During this Olympic qualification period, every tournament is crucial for the players fighting to collect points.
“Now the European Championships is going on, and contributes to the Olympic qualification scoring. Whereby the Asian championship is cancelled due to the pandemic. This means that the European continent has an extra tournament opportunity to gain more points.
“So how is this fair for the Asian players who are also fighting for the Olympic points? We hope BWF can look into this and have a better solution to be fair for the players. Thank you.”
The 2021 Asian Championships was originally scheduled to be held on April 27-May 2, but was postponed due to the pandemic. The European Championships continued to be held as planned. Both are Olympic qualifying tournaments and are extremely important to players who are fighting to qualify for Tokyo Olympics.
The Olympic qualification race ends on June 13, 2021. There is no scope for holding or rescheduling the Asian championships within this period.
BWF has not come out with a response or a solution to the concern raised by the players yet.
