Mandarin seen as road to success
DENMARK’S Viktor Axelsen is one of three Europeans to have cracked the top 10 of the men’s badminton world rankings. The 21-year-old is ranked ninth in the world. His fellow Danes, Jan O Jorgensen (second) and Hans-Kristian Vittinghus (eighth), are the other two.
The rest are all players from Asia, headed by China. And now Axelsen, keen to scale new heights on and off the court, has started learning Mandarin. He hopes that learning the language will be a key step in securing future sponsorship and lining up potential coaching jobs when he retires from the game.
“I started to take it up last New Year,” Axelsen said. “Coming into 2014 I had a talk with my former coach and he thought it was a good idea to begin learning it.
“I wanted to start something new and ever since it has been a one-way street. I am just getting better with each week and I hope that it will open some doors in Asia with sponsorship and work. I can't say right now that I will go to Asia (to live),” he added “but I’ll see where it leads me and right now it is an exciting language to learn as so many people in the world are speaking it. China is also a country of opportunities and that’s the other reason I am doing this.”
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