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BWF World Championships From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Official logo until 2006 The BWF World Championships (formerly known as IBF World Championships, also known as the World Badminton Championships) is a tournament organized by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) to crown the best badminton players in the world. The tournament started in 1977 and was held once every three years until 1983. However, the IBF 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 bi-annual 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 Olympic Games. 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 London. 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. Past winners Main article: Gold medalists at the BWF World Championships So far, only 17 countries have achieved at least a bronze medal in the tournament: nine in Asia, five in Europe, one in North America, South America, and Oceania. Africa is the only continent that has not won a medal. [edit] Successful players & national teams [edit] Successful players Several players have won gold medals in more than one category in a World Championship; this includes: * Denmark Lene Køppen, 1977, mixed doubles and women's singles * Indonesia Christian Hadinata, 1980, men's doubles and mixed doubles * South Korea Park Joo-bong, 1985, men's doubles and mixed doubles, 1991, men's doubles and mixed doubles * China Han Aiping, 1985, women's singles and doubles * China Ge Fei, 1997, women's doubles and mixed doubles * South Korea Kim Dong-moon, 1999, men's doubles and mixed doubles * China Gao Ling, 2001, 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/Lilyana 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.[1] Rank Player MS WS MD WD XD Total 1 South Korea Park Joo-bong 2 3 5 2 China Gao Ling 3 1 4 China Lin Dan 4 4 China Cai Yun 4 4 China Fu Haifeng 4 4 3 China Ge Fei 2 1 3 China Guan Weizhen 3 3 China Han Aiping 2 1 3 China Huang Sui 3 3 South Korea Kim Dong-moon 1 2 3 China Li Lingwei 2 1 3 China Lin Ying 3 3 MS: Men's singles; WS: Women's singles; MD: Men's doubles; WD: Women's doubles; XD: Mixed doubles [edit] Successful national teams Below is the gold medalists shown based by category and countries after the 2007 BWF World 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. They are followed by Indonesia and Korea with Denmark being the leading European country in the winners list. Rank Country 77 80 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 01 03 05 06 07 09 10 11 Total 1 China 2 3 5 4 3 1 1 3 21 3 3 22 4 3 4 5 5 53 2 Indonesia 1 4 1 3 2 1 2 22 2 18 3 Denmark 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 10 4 South Korea Korea 2 1 2 1 21 1 9 5 England 1 1 1 3 6 Sweden 1 1 2 7 Japan 1 1 United States 1 1 BOLD means overall winner of that World Championships ^1 China and Korea are tied with two gold medals. However, Korea won two silver medals and China won none, thus Korea became the overall winner. ^2 China won on superior of silver medal of four silver medals to Indonesia one, thus, China became overall winner. * This page was last modified on 15 October 2011 at 08:22. * Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. * Contact us