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When we think about badminton, it is usually a casual backyard or picnic game with our friends to while away our time. However, the age-old British Indian sport has turned into the fastest racket sport in a jiffy! Along with that, the health benefits and agility that come along with the sport with time are advantageous for all who take up the sport. Read on to learn more about these 13 smashing facts about Badminton.
Facts about Badminton
- The shuttlecock can reach the speed of 200 miles per hour which makes it the fastest racket sport in the world. This is equivalent to the peregrine falcon’s hunting dive that reaches more than that speed!
- Each shuttlecock is made with a total of 16 feathers of a goose and in particular from the left wing! That seems like a painful ordeal.
- Badminton became an official Olympic sport in 1992, before that there were 28 official Olympic sports.
- Badminton is highly popular in Asia, especially in countries like China, Indonesia, and India. That is why most of the tournaments are dominated by these countries!
- The longest badminton match on record lasted 124 minutes which is 2 hours and 4 minutes! That is the same as the runtime of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
- In 1877, the first official badminton club was established in Bath, England and was known as “The Bath Badminton Club.”
- The 1992 Olympic badminton finals captivated a huge global audience, drawing in 1.1 billion viewers. Furthermore, this also happened to be the year when badminton became an official Olympic sport.
- Today’s modern shuttlecocks are made for optimal aerodynamics which guarantees high speeds as well as precision.
- In badminton, doubles games which have both male and female players are called “mixed matches” rather than ‘mixed doubles’ as it is in the sport of tennis.
- The longest recorded badminton rally lasted over four and a half minutes with 256 shots. This means that each shot in the rally was hit every 1.054 seconds!
- In professional competitions, feather shuttlecocks are used for optimal performance, while synthetic ones are used during training.
- Badminton needs considerable physical durability and agility and is usually said to be more demanding than tennis due to its fast pace and need for quick reflexes.
- The longest marathon badminton match lasted 25 hours, 25 minutes, and 44 seconds, set by Thomas Paulweber and Mario Langmann which is also a Guinness world record!
FAQs
Badminton gets its name from Badminton House which is a large estate in England where the Duke of Beaufort introduced the sport in the 1870s. However, the Olympic sport has been played in Asia for ages.
The modern game of badminton we know today appeared in the mid-19th century, but games using shuttlecocks have been played for centuries across Eurasia.
The first country to play badminton was India in the city of Poona.
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I hope you had fun reading these 13 Smashing Facts about Badminton. If you want to know more about topics like this, then visit our Interesting Facts and General Knowledge page!