Chong Wei plans five-week solid training system to prepare for world meet

PETALING JAYA: World No. 1 shuttler Lee Chong Wei is ready to overcome several “virus” threats in his bid to become the country’s first world badminton champion.

And he believes that a five-week solid and focused training system will allow him to have the best preparation for the championships, which will be held in London from Aug 8-14.

Except for one more international assignment at the Indonesia Open Premier Super Series event from June 21-16, Chong Wei will be sharpening up in training and plotting strategies against probable opponents.

“This is the first time that I can spend a long time in training before a world meet. I will have about five weeks to focus on my game. In the past, there had been too many tournaments,” he said. “If all goes according to plan, I will have the best preparation for the world championships.”

China’s three-time champion Lin Dan will be his main threat but Chong Wei does not rule out the challenges from Denmark’s Peter-Gade Christensen and Indonesia’s Taufik Hidayat.

“I lost to Taufik in the championships last year (in the quarter-finals). Lin Dan may be the main challenger but I will not make the mistake of underestimating others,” said Chong Wei, who has yet to make the final in the series.

“Chong Wei said that the Indonesia Open would be a perfect warm-up for the championships.

“It is compulsory for all the top 10 players to compete in the Indonesia Open because it is a Premier Super Series event.

“All the world championship hopefuls will be there,” he said.

“I am prepared to meet anyone in Jakarta. My target is to retain the title to put me in the right mood for the world championships.”

If Chong Wei wins the Indonesia Open, it will be his sixth title this year. He had won the Super Series Masters Finals, Malaysia Open, All-England, India Open and the Malaysia Open Grand Prix Gold.

Chong Wei is also looking forward to a 10-day centralised training stint ahead of the world championships at the Bath University (July 27-Aug 5).

“I will be attending training at the Bath University for the first time (last year, Chong Wei and his former coach Misbun Sidek chose to skip the stint prior to the world meet in Paris),” he said.

“It will be a good familiarisation stint before the event. I hope that all plans will go smoothly. For now, I am injury free and I hope to stay that way.”

Yesterday at the Sunway Pyramid here, Chong Wei launched the Kaspersky No Worries Plan that promotes new packages for protection against IT-security threats, including viruses, spyware, crime-ware, hackers, phishing and spam.

The 29-year-old Chong Wei is the Malaysian Ambassador for Kaspersky Lab.

Posted by Lucas Liau on 7:17 PM. Filed under Top News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0