The BWF World Championships (formerly known as IBF World Championships, also known as the World Badminton Championships) is a badminton tournament sanctioned by Badminton World Federation (BWF). The tournament offers the most ranking points, together with Summer Olympic Games. The winners will be crowned as the "World Champions" and awarded gold medals. However, it does not offer any prize money.
The tournament started in 1977 and was held once every three years until 1983. However, the IBF (International Badminton Federation) faced difficulty in hosting the first two events as the World Badminton Federation (which later merged with the IBF to form one badminton federation) hosted the same tournament a year after the IBF World Championships with the same goals. Started 1985, the tournament became biennial and played once every two years until 2005. Starting 2006, the tournament was changed to an annual event on the BWF calendar with the goal to give more chances for the players to be crowned as official "World Champions". However, the tournament will not be held once every four years to give way to the Summer Olympic Games.
Video BWF World Championships
Location of the World Championships
The table below gives an overview of all host cities and countries of the World Championships. The most recent games were held in Nanjing. The number in parentheses following the city/country denotes how many times that city/country has hosted the championships. From 1989 to 2001 the world championships were held immediately after the Sudirman Cup at the same location.
Maps BWF World Championships
Past winners
So far, only 20 countries have achieved at least a bronze medal in the tournament: ten in Asia, eight in Europe, one in North America and one in Oceania. Africa is the only continent that has not won a medal.
At the age of 18, Ratchanok Inthanon became the youngest winner of a singles title at the Championships. Ratchanok was less than 3 months older than Jang Hye-ock was when she won the women's doubles title at the 1995 Championships.
Successful players & national teams
Successful players
Several players have won gold medals in more than one category in a World Championship; this includes:
- Lene Køppen, 1977, mixed doubles and women's singles
- Christian Hadinata, 1980, men's doubles and mixed doubles
- Park Joo-bong, 1985, men's doubles and mixed doubles, 1991, men's doubles and mixed doubles
- Han Aiping, 1985, women's singles and doubles
- Ge Fei, 1997, women's doubles and mixed doubles
- Kim Dong-moon, 1999, men's doubles and mixed doubles
- Gao Ling, 2001, women's doubles and mixed doubles
- Zhao Yunlei, 2014 & 2015, women's doubles and mixed doubles
From 1977 up to 2001, the medals were usually divided among five countries, namely China, Korea, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia. However, in 2003, the winners included seven countries and in 2005 the medal board contained a record high of ten countries.
Tony Gunawan also bears the distinction of winning a gold medal in Men's Doubles, representing two different countries, 2001 partnering with Halim Haryanto for Indonesia and in 2005 partnering with Howard Bach to give the United States its first medal in the competition.
The 2005 edition also brought new faces in the mixed doubles event which had been dominated by China and Korea since 1997. With the retirement of defending champions and two time winners Kim Dong-moon/Ra Kyung-min (Korea), Nova Widianto/Liliyana Natsir won Indonesia's first mixed doubles gold since 1980 when Christian Hadinata/Imelda Wiguna won it last for Indonesia.
Below is the list of the most successful players ever, with 3 or more gold medals.
Below is the list of the most successful player(s) in each category (listed according to their family names alphabetically):
MS: Men's singles; WS: Women's singles; MD: Men's doubles; WD: Women's doubles; XD: Mixed doubles
Successful national teams
Below is the gold medalists shown based by category and countries after the 2013 Championships. China has been the most successful in the World Championships ever since its inception in 1977. They were the only country ever to achieve a shutout of the medals which they did in 1987, 2010 and 2011.
BOLD means overall winner of that World Championships
Men's singles
Women's singles
Men's doubles
Women's doubles
Mixed doubles
Medal table
Updated after XXIV edition (2018), does not include one stripped silver medal from 2014
Medal distribution
Men's singles
- Note that due to a disqualification on suspicion of violation of anti-doping regulations, the 2014 silver medalist was stripped of his medal and thus the medal count doesn't add up.
Women's singles
Men's doubles
Women's doubles
Mixed doubles
References
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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