If you asked me what I wanted to be when I was a kid, a badminton Olympian wouldn’t have been my answer. Sure, I played badminton with my family at a local community center on Sunday afternoons, but that’s a far stretch. Perhaps all it took was passion, vision, and perseverance to get to my eventual goal, but that’s not really my story. I’m sure you can find other feel-good stories about “following your passion”, but I don’t think mine fits here. Not everyone follows their passion.
I started badminton when I was six years old and played recreationally with my parents and brother for a few years before my parents put me into a local tournament. I remember placing third place, so I actually did win something instead of a participation ribbon. By the time I was eleven, I was the Under-12 provincial champion. But that summer after winning, I didn’t touch a badminton racquet. Over the next few years, I progressed to U-16 consolation champion. For those who don’t know, consolations in badminton are when you lose in the first round and you compete against all the other players who lost first round. Fortunately, I was able to partner with a very good player at the time who introduced me to training more than the once-or-twice-a-week-kinda-thing that I did for the past few years. Eventually, I started doing better and I even got to a point where I was about to win my first National title at the U-19 Canadian Nationals… until we lost in the semifinal. I vowed to never play badminton again and go to school to be an engineer or something.
After failing physics in University (twice), I decided to play badminton again. Things picked up when I won College Nationals with my brother and medaled at the Canada Winter Games, but still the Canadian National title remained elusive, getting 2nd place six times over the next few years in both U-23 and Senior events. However, the golden opportunity came when I was invited to play the Pan American Championships as the second men’s doubles team. We finished in the semifinals, so another bronze medal, but it was one of the key turning points in my badminton career. It was with that result, I told myself, “Hey, maybe I could actually do this.”
So I tried to compete internationally that year and it went rather poorly. I remember in my first US Open, we lost in 12 minutes. But on the brights side, since it was my first time in Los Angeles, I was able to buy a lot of cheap shoes. Also, I had the chance to see some incredible badminton and get autographs from players at the tournament. It was definitely a learning experience. The rest of the season offered more opportunities as well, including an interesting dilemma: have a 99.99% chance of winning my first National title, or join Team Canada in the men’s World Team Championships (i.e. Thomas Cup) in Indonesia. They were on the same week that year.
I went to Indonesia, and although I only played two matches, I got to see the best in the world compete. I also got to see how far a difference in level Canada was compared to the rest of the world. The key lesson I learned from the experience was that I needed to retest my assumptions. As a junior badminton player in BC at the time, many players believed in taking a day off before a tournament. I’m not sure how this came to be, but it was because this was what people did, and there was no reason to challenge that assumption. In Indonesia, I witnessed the top Chinese player (he ended up winning Olympic Gold a few months later) practice in the morning, warm up before his match, defeat our top Canadian singles player, then go back to practice more because the match wasn’t long enough. Yes, I understand that there’s such a thing as overtraining, but on reflection, I was severely undertraining as a Canadian athlete in my sport.
From some of these lessons, I was then able to accelerate my performance and ironically, I was able to win the Pan American Championships before I won my first Canadian National title. This taught me a valuable lesson: sometimes the best way to meet a goal is to aim further than where you originally intended to go. Context is always important, so stopping in the middle of an intersection at a red light is not applicable. Regardless, the Olympic dream was born and at the time, I was able to take this principle and apply it differently than most other Canadians at the time. For some reason, many Canadian athletes believed that they could try to qualify for the Olympics in 2 years. Maybe in some sports, but I decided I was going to try it 4 years out. I pretty much stopped my schooling and moved to Calgary to train with my mixed doubles partner and a former 2-time Olympic Gold medalist from South Korea. I’ve never lived anywhere else before, but if I could learn from the best, why would I NOT go?
It wasn’t an easy few years training full time, but things started coming along. The road wasn’t always smooth, with many ups and downs, but to cut the length of this story down, we made it. Some highlights along the way (both good and bad) include: winning international titles, losing funding for a year, getting ranked Top 16 in the world rankings which was the highest Canadian ranking at the time during the year we lost funding, winning a 2011 Pan Am Games gold medal, and our coach having to return to Korea before the Olympics. But in the end, we still made it and had the incredible opportunity to represent Canada at the 2012 Olympics in London. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it out of our pool in the pool play, but it was an honour to be 1 out of the 16 teams competing at that event! I ended up leaving after the badminton was over because I was trying to study for an MCAT to get into medical school. Worst idea ever (thanks to “follow your passion”), as I’m no longer pursuing that anymore.
That’s the end of the first part. There’s a second part, and I’m currently in the middle of the third part. The key lessons I learned from my Olympic experience include:
– “Follow opportunity” instead of “Follow your passion”. There were many opportunities I was able to take advantage of, even through uncertainty. If anything, that’s what opportunity is. There’s supposed to be uncertainty. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I failed, but by taking an opportunity, you get to learn something new. Perhaps it may be challenging an old assumption, perhaps it’s an entirely different experience, all I know is that opportunities don’t always stick around.
– Sometimes you don’t need to achieve a goal or benchmark exactly before moving on. Perhaps being a national semi-finalist is enough to pursue international badminton. Sometimes it’s better to aim higher. For example, if a younger athlete tells me they want to make a semifinal at a nationals, I usually respond with, “Why not just aim to win? Because if you aim to win, you’ll need to take the necessary steps to be prepared to win. If you aim to be a semifinalist, you will train to be a semifinalist.”
– Talent is overrated. My parents thought I was talented to win when I was a kid, but now I know better. I just practiced more than the other kids at that time. But after I won, I stopped training. It wasn’t that I had gotten worse, but rather everyone else just got better while I stayed the same. I’m a heavy believer of K. Anders Ericsson’s work on “deliberate practice”. Not so much of Malcom Gladwell’s “10 000 hour rule”, but it is explained thoroughly in Ericsson’s book, “Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise”. High recommended.
And there you have it. Part 1! If this has been enjoyable, perhaps I will write Part 2, which offers a very different set of lessons. No matter your goals, do your best! Aim high! Look for opportunity! Who knows where it will take you? It took me to the Olympics!
Toby Ng, Canadian Olympic Badminton Player.
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