With neon lights on the floor and walls, pulsing electronic beats, and a glowing red shuttlecock bouncing back and forth, a Malaysian badminton court evokes a sci-fi movie set.
Shuttle in the Dark, a badminton hall in the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, was set up late last year by Inic Sport Management, a sports management company, to encourage people to take up the sport after two years of social restrictions because amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our initial goal was how can we encourage and gain back the interest of people to come back and play,” Inic Sport Management director Irina Inozemtseva said. “Not only those enthusiasts, but then as well, the new people who were not able to or never played badminton before.”
Photo: Reuters
Playing in a futuristic court presents an unusual challenge for athletes, as they have to adjust their eyes to the darkness to play, professional badminton coach Lee Yan Sheng said.
“With the lighting, somehow we are still able to hit it and then it requires better focus,” Lee said. “And it’s exciting. It’s different, but it’s still like playing normal” badminton, professional player Ho Yen Mei said.
Open to athletes of all levels, Shuttle in the Dark charges 180 ringgit (US$42.63) per hour to use the courts and rent their neon equipment.
A regular public court in Malaysia charges about 20 ringgit.
Former reality TV star Jessie Holmes on Tuesday night cruised to a repeat victory in the Iditarod, the about 1,609km sled dog race in Alaska. Holmes guided his dog team across the finish line in the old Gold Rush town of Nome, a Bering Sea coastal community. The race started on March 8 in Willow, a day after the ceremonial start in Anchorage. The course took dog teams and their mushers over two mountain ranges, along the frozen Yukon River and across the unpredictable Bering Sea ice. Holmes, a former cast member on the National Geographic reality show Life Below Zero, is the
Taiwanese boxer and Olympic gold medalist Lin Yu-ting has been approved to compete in the Asian Boxing Elite Championships, the Chinese Taipei Boxing Association (CTBA) said yesterday. The championships start on Saturday next week in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Lin became entangled in a gender controversy, despite the International Olympic Committee confirming her eligibility to compete as a female boxer. In August last year, World Boxing mandated a new regulation that required all athletes to undergo a polymerase chain reaction. genetic test to determine their sex at birth and their eligibility. Since the introduction of the test, Lin has missed several
The Taoyuan Pauian Pilots on Sunday fell short in their bid for a first East Asia Super League (EASL) title after a 90-81 loss to Japan’s Utsunomiya Brex in Macau. The defeat marked the second straight year the defending P.League+ champions missed out on the EASL crown, but they remain the first team to reach back-to-back championship games in the league’s three-year history. The outcome was largely decided by long-range shooting. The Pilots struggled from beyond the arc, hitting just five of 20 attempts, while the Brex converted 19 three-pointers, shooting 46.3 percent from long range. Seven of the eight Brex players
ONE MORE CHANCE: While North Korea denied Taiwan in Australia, Taiwan, who last played in the World Cup in 1991, could still qualify via inter-confederation playoffs Taiwan yesterday lost 4-0 to a dominant North Korea in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup playoffs, closing off an avenue to qualify for the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Hong Song-ok scored a hat-trick in the match to determine the last of the confederation’s qualifiers from the tournament for next year’s World Cup in Brazil. With their victory over Taiwan, North Korea has qualified for the first time since a doping saga in 2011 led to their long absence from top-tier international tournaments. Angela Beard and Jaclyn Sawicki scored in a six-minute span to help the Philippines secure a World Cup spot with a
RSS