Las Vegas badminton star looks for redemption in Paris Olympics

By Jeff Wollard Las Vegas Review-Journal

5 months ago

Beiwen Zhang of the U.S. plays a return during a badminton game of the women's singles against ... — Beiwen Zhang of the U.S. plays a return during a badminton game of the women’s singles against An Se-young of South Korea in the BWF World Championships in Tokyo, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

United States’ Beiwen Zhang returns a shot to China’s He Bing Jiao in their women’s singles match during the Indonesia Open badminton championship in Jakarta, Indonesia, Thursday, July 18, 2019.(AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim)

Beiwen Zhang, of the United States, cries after being injured and not being able to complete her women’s singles round of 16 badminton match against China’s He Bingjiao at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Thursday, July 29, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Beiwen Zhang was 8 years old when she first picked up a badminton racket.

It was all part of a plan to improve the youngster’s health, and it worked. The Chinese-born athlete stayed with the sport, moved to America and will play for the U.S. team in Paris.

The Las Vegas resident will be making her second Olympic appearance. She competed for the American team in the Tokyo Games in 2021 before exiting with an injury.

“When I was a child, my immune system was bad, so my parents put me into sports to get healthier,” said Zhang, who became a U.S. citizen in 2013. “I wasn’t really interested in badminton at first. But I thought the shuttlecock had a weird shape, and that’s what sparked my interest.”

That spark turned into something bigger.

“It turned out the more I played, the more I liked it,” said Zhang, who also played for Singapore as a teen after becoming a citizen there in 2003.

Zhang, a singles specialist, compiled an impressive resume that catapulted her to the No. 9 world ranking by 2017.

She said her destiny to play for the U.S. team revealed itself when she was offered a chance to play at the next level.

“The owner of the Las Vegas team convinced me that I had a legitimate shot to play professionally,” said Zhang, 34. “At that time I decided to move to the U.S., so representing this country came naturally.”

With that decision came a move to Las Vegas, where she has lived ever since.

“They had started a traveling team and were pretty serious about competing,” Zhang said. “So I started to travel with their team.”

She flourished, winning three Grand Prix titles — the U.S. Open, Brazil Open and Dutch Open — in her first full year of competition. That eventually led her to become a member of the U.S. team that competed in the Tokyo Olympics.

Zhang finished ninth in Tokyo and has not forgotten the rupture to her Achilles tendon that caused her to forfeit a match she was winning against China. Her goal in Paris will be to avenge that setback.

“The drawing for the group stage is out now,” she said. “So my realistic goal is to make it out of the group stage and play the 2016 Olympic gold medalist (Carolina Marin of Spain) in the knockout stage.”

Zhang is coming off a gold-medal performance in April’s Guatemala City Pan Am AirBadminton Championships, so she will have momentum on her side in Paris.

But Zhang, who has been largely self-coached for financial reasons in recent years, said 2024 will be her final time wearing the red, white and blue. She plans to retire after the Olympics. She has retired twice before, but insists it’s for good this time.

That gives her added incentive in Paris.

“I think I can speak of every player when I say that the Olympics brings a different kind of pressure,” said Zhang, ranked 11th in the world. “Just being able to control what I can control on that day will be my biggest obstacle.”

Review-Journal reporter Jeff Wollard can be reached at jwollard@reviewjournal.com.