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ndonesia’s current low achievements in the world’s badminton leagues is normal, said the country’s head coach for badminton singles, Li Mao, as setbacks had also happened to powerhouses such as China.

The Chinese-born coach said that the country is currently at its lowest point of performance but this is normal in any badminton powerhouse. He said the nation just has to admit the hard truth while working more seriously on the players’ techniques if it aims to strive for resurgence in the badminton world.

Li Mao, who never gives interviews to the media, talked with reporters for the first time on Thursday, after being publicly scrutinized over the disappointing performance of the national singles squad since taking over the coaching bench in January. The 53-year-old coach spoke on the sidelines of the team’s departure ceremony for the BWF World Badminton Championships in London, from Aug. 8 to 14.

“Indonesia needs to accept the current reality: That it’s at its lowest point at the moment, [but from there] it can climb back to the top again,” Li Mao said through an interpreter.

“I believe this is a normal condition for any badminton country, even China,” said Li Mao citing the example of China’s lowest point of achievement at the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima, Japan, where the badminton juggernaut returned home with only seven bronze medals, while Indonesia at that time brought home three golds.

Li Mao, who previously coached the South Korean and Malaysian national teams, acknowledged that
Indonesia does have plenty of talented players.

“But their techniques need to be polished, which will require time,” he said.

Li Mao believes that technique-polishing is more important than physical drilling, citing the examples from world badminton’s Big Four in men’s singles sector: Lee Chong Wei, Lin Dan, Peter Gade and Taufik Hidayat, who currently rule the fast-paced courts, despite all of them being around 30 years of age.

He said that, although at first the national singles shuttlers struggled to adapt to his training method, things have been better lately. “We are 90 percent on the right track. [And] there’s hope for achievements at the 2012 Olympics and afterwards,” assured Li Mao.

Nevertheless, Li Mao preferred to be unspecific in setting out his goals for the singles shuttlers at the upcoming world championships, which will be hosted for the first time at the prestigious Wembley Arena, also the venue for next year’s Olympics. Wembley Arena was also the renowned venue for the prestigious badminton tournament, the All England, between 1957 and 1993.

The arena witnessed numerous top shuttlers from Indonesia’s glory days. National head coach for the doubles players, Christian Hadinata, who won the All England at Wembley Arena in 1979, hopes that some of the 24 shuttlers heading to London will be able to come home as world champions instead.

“Hopefully, some of you will repeat our past triumphs,” Christian told the national squad.

The last time Indonesian shuttlers came home as world champions was in 2007, when men’s doubles team Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan, and the then-mixed doubles team of Nova Widianto and Liliyana Natsir, won the gold medals.