Word: badminton
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There is in fact a finite number of jokes to be made about the word shuttlecock. But after the puerile humor is exhausted, it is the high-speed birdies themselves that attract attention to the sport of badminton. That is, perhaps, why the stands are often empty at Harvard Badminton Club (HBC) competitions...
...night, the hazy roadside darkness is broken by a fluorescent-lit restaurant, its plastic tables and chairs idle; by an illuminated badminton court, its lines drawn in the dirt, its players immaculate in their whites; by an overturned lumber truck, its wheels still spinning. And finally, having finished a bag of snakefruit bought on the Dumai docks, I reach Medan, a typically crowded and polluted Indonesian city in a region that was the Deli Sultanate when the lofty sails of Zheng He's fleets darkened these skies...
...Sundays we get together for a family dinner. Sometimes her ex-husband joins us. We play games and music. We talk about school, sports and movies. I take my friend's son out for driving lessons in my jalopy. My friend challenges my daughter to a game of badminton. We watch home movies together, and when I see my dear friend's kids as toddlers, I have a hard time believing that I wasn't always there, somewhere just beyond the reach of the camera lens. We watch each other's back, lend each other money and love each other...
Martin is a star in Denmark, of course, but badminton players don't get the kind of exposure the glamorous Kournikova gets. And there's a salient difference between Martin and the much ogled Kournikova--Martin wins big matches. She's the defending world champion. Last week she achieved a silver medal, losing only in the singles finals to China's top-seeded Gong Zhichao...
Emotionally stoic during a match, Martin is lithe on the court and uses her reach to pick a shuttlecock from the floor or violently put it away from on high. Badminton is an astonishing sport to watch live: fast and furious, nothing like the gentle game of summer cookouts. If anyone can raise its profile, it's this darting Dane...