Badminton has been around for more than 2000 years, coming a long way from its earliest form of Battledore and Shuttlecock (without context, we would totally believe “battledore” had something to do with Game of Thrones). The history of the sport has probably been talked about a lot, so let’s not go over that today. As you gear up for a game of badminton with your friends, let us bring to you some of the lesser known interesting facts.

Quickie

Have you ever snoozed an alarm to get a few more minutes of sleep? Well you may want to use those few extra minutes to beat your friend at a game of badminton instead. We kid you not. Ra Kyung-min from South Korea needed just 6 minutes to beat Julia Mann from UK 11-2, 11-1 during the 1996 Uber Cup in Hong Kong and created the record for the shortest badminton match ever!

Time please?

If there is a record for the shortest match, there should surely be one for the longest. Peter Rasmussen from Denmark had to hang in there for a whole 124 minutes before he beat Sun Jun from China in the men’s singles final at the 1997 World Championship at Glasgow, Strathclyde.

Keep left

The best Shuttlecocks are made with the feathers from the left wing of a goose. Next time you chance upon a goose with missing feathers in her left wing, you know why. Each of those feathers are neatly arranged and fixed in a cork base and covered with kid leather. This design of the shuttlecock makes it aerodynamically stable. Whatever be the initial orientation, it will always fly cork first and remain in the cork-first orientation.

Up the speed game

The fastest racquet sport is not Tennis or Squash, it is actually Badminton, with the shuttlecock speed reaching more than 200mph! Denmark’s Mads Pieler Kolding set a new world record with a 268 mph smash during a doubles match in India’s Premier Badminton League 2017. You would not want to come in that shuttlecock’s way! With this he would break the Guinness World Record of 253 mph set by three-time Olympic silver medalist Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia in 2015.