Lin Dan, or Super Dan, is China's top badminton player. He's also had a few run-ins with authority figures. There was the time he tried to hit another player's coach with his racket. And the other time he took a swing at his own coach with a racket. None of that, however, has stopped the 24-year-old from becoming a Chinese heartthrob. Lin Dan puts the bad-ass in badminton, if that's in anyway possible.
Despite his prodigious talent (he's been ranked number 1 since 2004), Lin Dan flamed out and lost in the first round of the 2004 Olympics. Lin Dan also dates Xie, the world's top women's badminton player. And they both played on side-by-side courts Tuesday. The possibilities for a stormy collapse were there.
Instead:
In a 21-16, 21-13 win Tuesday over Hong Kong's Ng Wei, Lin hung in midair like Kobe Bryant and backpedaled faster than a politician after election day. He lobbed and dinked and smashed with exquisite precision, occasionally sending Ng skittering across the court in chase.
Yep, just like Kobe.
China's badminton bad boy has girls swooning [Dallas Morning News]