Badminton in Taiwan has almost doubled in popularity over the past decade, the Ministry of Sports said yesterday, attributing the growth to the overseas success of Taiwanese players.
Among people participating in ball-related sports, 9.4 percent play badminton, up 4.2 percentage points from the 5.2 percent reported in 2016, a survey conducted by the ministry found.
That growth appears significant compared with the 0.4 percentage point increase in public participation in ball-related sports since 2016, the ministry said.
Photo: Liu Yu-ching, Taipei Times
Interest in the sport was likely boosted by the success of Taiwanese shuttlers in international competitions, including Taiwan’s gold in the men's doubles at last year’s Paris Olympics and in the women's singles at the 2023 Badminton Asia Championships, it said.
Lee Yang (李洋), who has hung up his racket and is now minister of sport, paired up with Wang Chi-ling (王齊麟) to win back-to-back Olympic men's doubles gold medals in 2021 and last year, while Tai Tzu-ying (戴資穎), widely regarded as an all-time great, dominated the women's world rankings for a record 214 weeks, before officially declaring her retirement early last month.
Tai is the major reason behind the sport's increased popularity — one that even outpaces the country's notoriously low birth rate, said Lai Chin-ting (賴勁廷), a badminton coach at New Taipei City's Lu Jiang Elementary School.
Referring to a nationwide elementary school competition that ended last week, Lai said that such an event — consisting of individual and team categories — used to conclude within a week about 15 years ago.
“It took two weeks to finish all of them this year,” Lai said.
Records on the competition’s official Web site show that the event ran for eight days in 2015, compared with 13 days this year, with the total number of individuals, doubles and mixed teams growing from 415, 188 and 108 to 993, 391 and 229, respectively, over the same period.
Of the respondents to the ministry’s survey on Taiwanese nationals' exercise habits, 35.6 percent said that they engage in regular exercise, meaning at least three times a week, for at least 30 minutes at a time, at an intensity that causes a person to sweat and breathe heavily.
The number increased for a fifth consecutive year and was the highest reported since 2016, but the 0.3 percentage point hike was still within the 0.6 percentage point margin of error, the ministry said.
The survey, which involved 25,472 samples, was conducted from June to August, and targeted respondents aged 13 or older via telephone, the ministry said.
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