Olympic Champion Yang Wei on Tuesday expressed her confidence in defending the women's doubles' championship at the Beijing Olympics, saying the draw result is "not bad."
The badminton draw for the coming Olympics pitted defending champions Yang Wei and Zhang Jiewen in the first round against fledging Indonesian pair Liliyana Natsir and Vita Marissa, currently ranked No.7 on women's doubles' list.
The draw result for Yang/Zhang was chorused as bad luck by media reports. Even Li Yongbo, head coach of the Chinese badminton team, took it as the worst one among all the five events.
Veteran Yang, however, chose to believe in faith and fate, which are the two pillars of beliefs stated by Amy Tan, a famous Chinese-American writer in her first non-fiction book The Opposite of Fate.
"I prefer to believe in faith," Yang wrote in her personal blog. "If all the members of the Chinese squad have faith in victory, we will serve many fantastic games for sports fans all over the world."
The badminton draw ceremony was held last Saturday by the Badminton World Federation in Henan Plaza, and the competition will start from August 9 to 17 at the Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium.
(Xinhua News Agency July 30, 2008)