Bad week for badminton: after Lin Dan scandal racks up 2.5 billion views on Weibo, China teammates fail to win any titles at home event for first time
Teammates can’t provide positive headlines for the sport as star’s affair dominates social media in China
An embarrassing few days for Chinese badminton continued as home players missed out on all five titles in the China Open – the first time in the tournament’s 30-year history.
After Lin Dan’s affair scandal dominated social media in the days leading up to the final, his teammates – sans Lin – embarrassingly failed on home soil in a sport they have traditionally dominated.
And in a blow for Hong Kong fans, Olympic champion Chen Long pulled out of this week’s Hong Kong Open after being shocked in the China Open final.
The state-linked tabloid Global Times said that the Weibo hashtag about Lin’s affair had racked up an astonishing 2.5 billion views by Sunday afternoon after intimate pictures of the two-time Olympic champion, one of China sport’s biggest stars, with a woman were posted on the social media site.
There were 690,000 comments on that topic. Another hashtag “Lin Dan out of control after drinking” was clicked on 1.4 million times after the woman involved made that claim.