Li Yongbo

Li Yongbo / Tian Bingyi won two World Championship titles (1987, 1989), making them the first men’s doubles pair to successfully defend their world title. They also won three consecutive Thomas Cups (1986, 1988, 1990) with the Chinese team. They competed and won at Seoul 1988 where badminton was a demonstration sport. In 1992, when badminton was added to the Olympic programme for the first time, Li / Tian earned the bronze medal, to mark the end of their playing careers.

The years 1992 and 1993 were a low point for China’s badminton, as they won only one title from the 1992 Olympic Games, the 1992 World Cup, the 1992 Thomas Cup, the 1993 World Championships, and the 1993 Sudirman Cup. This led to the decision to carry out a major personnel re-shuffle within the coaching staff, and gave Li Yongbo, whose coaching experience was still short, a chance to become the acting chief coach of the national team in August, 1993. He successfully coached China to win the 1995 Sudirman Cup, after which he officially became the chief coach of the national team, a position he held until April, 2017. In the 24 years of leading the national team, Li guided China to win 18 Olympic gold medals, 43 World Champiship titles, 5 Thomas Cups, 9 Uber Cups, and 10 Sudirman Cups. The pinnacle was China winning all 5 gold medals in a major competition three consecutive times (2010, 2011 World Championships; 2012 London Games).

As the architect of China’s dominance in badminton, Li Yongbo’s legacy remains deeply controversial. In an interview in 2007, he admitted that, Ye Zhaoying had been instructed to lose the semi-final match to Gong Zhichao at Sydney 2000, because he felt Gong had a better chance to defeat Camilla Martin in the finals. In another interview in 2008, he admitted that, at Athens 2004, Zhou Mi had been instructed to lose the semi-final match to Zhang Ning after Zhou lost the first game, in order to save Zhou’s energy for the final against Mia Audina. The most infamous incident came when he instructed Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang to intentionally lose a game during the group stage at London 2012. The Badminton World Federation soon decided to disqualify Wang and Yu, which later led to another embarrassing moment for Li in the bronze medal game of women’s doubles at Rio 2016.

Li was inducted into the BWF Hall of Fame in 2011, together with his long-time partner Tian Bingyi, who had been Li’s doubles partner during his playing career and right-hand man during his coaching career.