Irish No 1 faces Denmark's Olympic champ in own back yard
REMATCH: Ireland’s Nhat Nguyen in action against Viktor Axelsen of Denmark during June's European Games. Pic: INPHO/Tom Maher
Take a walk through the streets of Copenhagen this next week and Viktor Axelsen will be hard to miss.
The city plays host to the BWF World Badminton Championships as of Monday and the 29-year-old is very much the leading man. Billboards and buses, as well as social media channels, are all awash with his likeness.
The reigning men’s Olympic singles champion, Axelsen has in and around three dozen major medals to his name. He is bidding to become the first Dane to win the title on home soil. And Ireland’s top player faces him first up.
Nhat Nguyen is six years his junior and deep into the one-year qualification window for Paris 2024. Win even once at the Worlds and it can supercharge your climb up the ladder so meeting a man of Axelsen’s abilities in round one is unfortunate if tantalising.
The 9,500-capacity arena is all but sold out for the event’s entire run, and all games are televised on national TV, but none of this should be a culture clash for the Irish contingent given Denmark was the team’s training base before the National Indoor Arena came on line.
Dan Magee, Badminton Ireland’s high-performance director, is frank in assessing Nguyen’s chances against a player who beat the Irish No 1 in straight sets at the European Games in Poland at the end of June this year.
“They have always had a tradition of having top world players throughout the years but nothing like Axelsen who is such a prominent force in sport in his country. Like, he is winning the top sports awards in Denmark and it is a very competitive sporting country.”
The man from Odense is a crowd favourite as well as a winner but he is keenly aware of the expectation on his shoulders and he has opted to handle it by blocking it out and basically isolating himself for the task ahead.
His recent form has been exceptional and, while Axelsen has been winning titles for over a dozen years now, the hope has to be that this wave of anticipation neutralises at least some of the many weapons in his arsenal.
“That’s the way we have to approach it,” said Magee. “It is a first round and Nhat is a difficult opponent and on his day can be very dangerous. We have seen that in Tokyo when Nhat was playing a top ten player in Wang Tzu-wei. He really pushed him.
“Again, that was an opening round match where maybe he underestimated Nhat or had the pre-match jitters so we’re hoping that the expectation that goes with this being Axelsen’s home event is something that Nhat can play on and try to get a good start to the game.”
Whatever the outcome there - and Nguyen has performed impressively against top ten opponents in 2023 - he is well-positioned to qualify for a second Olympic Games when the qualification period ends next April.
There are 38 places available for the 2024 Games in his division and Nguyen is currently ranked 22nd. The ten best results over a 12-month stretch will determine his fate and the aim is to secure a place as early as possible so that the run-in for Paris can be tailored to fit.
Irish interest in Denmark will stretch to the women’s singles and the men’s doubles with Rachel Darragh facing Doha Hany of Egypt first up. It’s a tricky but winnable draw for the Irishwoman who reached the quarter-finals of the last Commonwealth Games.
Darragh is 31st in her own points race with the same number of places available while the men’s pair of Joshua Magee and Paul Reynolds are just the other side of the cutoff point as they look to boost their own hopes at the World Championships.
Only 16 places are up for grabs there. Magee and Reynolds are 14th right now but three places are likely to be set aside for continental non-qualifiers. They face the Australian duo of Kenneth Zhe Hooi Choo and Ming Chuen Lim in round one.
As draws go at these championships, it’s not the worst. Every point will count.
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