Fu Hai Feng

Jayce September 6, 2024 2 0

Character Introduction

Fu Haifeng (傅海峰), a native of Jieyang, Guangdong Province, is a Chinese former male badminton player who specializes in doubles and is known as the “Fengyun Duo” with his partner, Cai Yun (蔡赟). He won the men’s doubles title at the World Championships four times in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2011, and was an important member of the Chinese national badminton team that won five consecutive Thomas Cups and six consecutive Sudirman Cups; he won the men’s doubles gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics, successfully completing the Grand Slam domination, and won the men’s doubles gold medal at the Rio Olympics again in 2016 with his partner Zhang Nan. He officially retired in 2017 and was inducted into the Badminton World Federation Hall of Fame in 2021.

Fu Haifeng was born in Huilai County, Jieyang City, Guangdong Province, and is originally from Pengkou Village, Pengkou Town, Liancheng County, Fujian Province. His grandfather, Fu Shiteng, moved to Indonesia for business in his early years, and returned to his home country in 1961 after the exclusion of Indonesia from China, where he was assigned to work at the Dasan Mountain Overseas Chinese Farm in Huilai County. Because all the overseas Chinese living in the farm are returned from Indonesia, Indonesia’s “national” badminton is very popular here, Fu Haifeng’s father Fu Mingying is one of the masters, often in Shantou City, Shantou City’s competitions to achieve good results, and he later became the local badminton team’s coach.

Within two years of entering the Guangzhou Sports and Technology Institute, Fu was selected to play for the Guangdong Provincial Sports Team, and later represented Guangdong in the 2002 National Badminton Championships. In that tournament, the Guangdong team, which lacked a men’s doubles team, temporarily arranged for Fu to play men’s doubles and teamed up with Zhu Diwen in the doubles event; however, surprisingly, the duo, which had only been training for a few months, ended up winning the second place. The Chinese national badminton team coach Tang Xianhu through this tournament, noticed the strong sense of offense, backcourt kill Fu Haifeng, then he directly transferred to the national team.

At that time, coincided with the national team just lost the Thomas Cup, the coaching team decided to the weak men’s doubles team completely reform; and Fu Haifeng just in time for this reorganization, exceptional skip the second team, directly transferred into the first team. The coach arranged the excellent offense of him and the net in front of the delicate Cai Yun partner doubles; their technical characteristics have obvious complementary, cooperation effect is excellent, in the combination of a week after the China Open Badminton Championships, the new pair of partners will immediately beat the tournament’s top seed Denmark’s Eriksson/Hansen, successfully into the semifinals. As the duo’s performances became more and more popular among the outside world, the media and supporters named them after their names (“Feng” means “wind” and “Eddie” means “cloud”), giving them a name that is synonymous with the words “wind” and “cloud”. The media and supporters took their names as harmonies (“Feng” is the same as “wind”, “Eddie” is the same as “cloud”) and gave them the nickname “Feng Yun Combination”.

In early 2005, Fu Haifeng / Cai Yun in the German Open badminton won their first open championship. A week later, they played again in the All England Badminton Open, and in the final to 2-0 (15-10, 15-6) to beat the World Championships champion, Danish combination Rasmussen / Pask, won the title; this is the Chinese men’s doubles Li Yongbo / Tian Bingyi won the title in 1991, after a lapse of 14 years began to regain the title of the All England Championships. In June of the same year, Fu Haifeng was selected to represent the Sudirman Cup, and eventually in addition to helping the national team to regain this lost trophy, the individual more in the tournament during the speed of 332 kilometers per hour to kill the ball, the fastest badminton ball speed record.

In 2007, the “Fung Yun Duo” continued to achieve strong results, winning the Singapore Superseries, Indonesia Superseries, China Masters and France Superseries, as well as the All England Superseries, Denmark Superseries and Hong Kong Superseries, and helping the Chinese team to successfully defend the Sudirman Cup in the team competition.

Entering the 2008 Olympic year, Fu Haifeng/Cai Yun started the year by winning the Korea Superseries and Thailand Open, and helping China to achieve a third consecutive victory in the Thomas Cup. In August of the same year, they played in the Olympic Games Men’s Doubles Badminton Tournament as the hosts and the No. 2 seeds of the tournament, and made it to the final against the Indonesian duo and the No. 1 seeds of the tournament, Hendra Setiawan/Markis Kido. In the end, the “wind and clouds combination” in the case of leading a game, by the opponent to 1-2 counter victory, only a silver medal, but has set the best Chinese men’s doubles Olympic results.

After the Beijing Olympics, due to Cai Yun said to consider retiring, the coaching team then split the two pairs, respectively, partner Xu Chen, Shen Ye to play in the Danish Super Tournament. Afterwards, Cai Yun gave up the idea of retirement, “wind and clouds” then continue to fight for the London Olympics.

After a disappointing Olympics and a brief split, the “Fengyun duo” returned to the court to fight for good results. in August 2009, they once again entered the final of the World Badminton Championships to compete with the previous runner-up, the South Korean duo of Jung Jae-sung/Lee Yong-dae for the title. In the end, the two sides fought to the deciding game, and from 18-18 stalemate to 26-26, Fu Haifeng / Cai Yun in the missed six match points before 28-26 to overcome their opponents, difficult to regain this World Championships title.

After that, Feng Yun experienced a period of slump, only to win the China Masters and Korea Super Tournament runner-up, the world ranking once slipped to 28th. 2010 August, they as the fifth seed to play again in the World Badminton Championships, successively eliminated the third seed of Denmark’s Mathias Bowie/Karsten Mogensen and Olympic champion Indonesia’s Marquise Kiddo/Hendra Setyawan, in time to regain the good form to reach the final. They were able to regain their form in time to make it to the final. Finally, they lost a game first to 2-1 (18-21, 21-18, 21-14) reversed the world’s top-ranked Malaysian duo Koo Kien Keat/Tan Boon Hong to win, becoming the first men’s doubles pair in the history of the World Championships, the first triple champion.

One year later, Fu Haifeng/Cai Yun again played in the World Badminton Championships in London. After a blank in the first round, they eliminated Russian, Japanese and Danish players successively, and faced their arch-rivals Jung Jae-sung/Lee Yong-dae in the semi-final, which was also the third consecutive time that the two sides faced each other in the World Championships; finally, Feng Yun won in straight sets, and fought with the other South Korean pair, Gao Sung-hyun/Yoo Yeon-seung, to win the title. In the final, Fengyun first saved three set points in the first set, then took the second set to beat their opponents 2-0 (24-22, 21-16), historically realizing the third consecutive World Championships, and also becoming the first pair to win the World Championships Men’s Doubles Championships for four times.

On August 5, 2012, “Feng Yun” in the final against the world’s third Danish team Mathias Bowie/Karsten Mogensen, and finally, it took them only 45 minutes to defeat their opponents in two sets, 21-16, 21-15, to win the gold medal, and help China’s badminton team for the first time to bag all the hardware of the Olympic Games! The team’s first ever Olympic gold medal was won by the Chinese badminton team.

As the Feng Yun duo lost to Indonesia’s Hendra Setiawan/Muhammad Ahsan in the semifinals of the 2013 World Badminton Championships, the Chinese coaching staff, realizing that the duo was not getting any younger, began to arrange for each of them to be partnered with a younger player, with Cai Yun being paired with Lu Kai, while Fu Haifeng was partnered with Zhang Nan, who had been previously concentrating on the Mixed Doubles event.

Before the start of the 2016 Rio Olympics, the combination of Fu Haifeng and Zhang Nan came to the highest world ranking of No. 3, but due to the lack of physical fitness that may have resulted from Zhang Nan’s simultaneous need to double as a mixed doubles event, as well as the fact that the two had only won three titles in three years since they were paired together, the pair’s results were not favored at the outset.In August 2016, Fu Haifeng/Zhang Nan were seeded 4th to play in the Summer Olympic Games badminton men’s doubles tournament. They met Wu Weisheng/Chen Weijiang again in the final, and eventually narrowly won 1-2 (16-21, 21-11, 23-21) after losing the first set, and Fu Haifeng became the first athlete ever to reach three consecutive Olympic badminton men’s doubles finals and win two gold medals.

After winning gold at the Rio Olympics, Fu Haifeng confirmed his retirement, during which he did not enter the court for two months; however, he subsequently agreed to return to the national team after chief coach Li Yongbo wanted him to stay and help the team play the Sudirman Cup.

In May 2017, Fu Haifeng represented China in the Sudirman Cup held on the Gold Coast of Australia, his eighth consecutive individual appearance in the Cup. The Fu Haifeng/Zhang Nan pairing had played three matches in the tournament – against Hong Kong in the group stage opener, against India in the semi-quasi-finals, and against South Korea in the final – winning all three without much suspense. However, the Chinese team was finally reversed by the Korean team with 2-3, and Fu Haifeng could only end his international career with a silver medal. After the match, he said: “This is really his last international match, but after that he will partner with Zhang Nan to participate in the National Games.” Coach Zhang Jun, on the other hand, praised Fu Haifeng’s excellent performance: “I’ve been working with him since 2008, and before that I was teammates with him, and after that I spent time with him as a coach. He gives me the feeling that he is the most admired, the most convincing as well as the most dedicated athlete among the athletes I have brought so far, and his role model will be passed on in the men’s doubles group.”

On June 9, 2017, the World Badminton Federation (WBF) released the news about Fu Haifeng who is going to bid farewell to the badminton world.

In September 2017, Fu Haifeng represented Guangdong Province in badminton at the 13th National Games of the People’s Republic of China. The Rio Olympic champion duo Fu Haifeng/Zhang Nan lost in the men’s doubles semifinals and went on to the bronze medal match, only to lose to Zheng Siwei/Wang Sijie, 18-21, 17-21, without a medal. After the match, Fu Haifeng officially hung up his racket to put an end to his more than 20 years of sports career. He believes that retirement is a necessary stage in the life of every athlete, and hopes that after retirement, he can contribute to the grassroots badminton, enhance the enthusiasm of the young players of the local team in training, and deliver talents to the country. Finally, he responded to the reporter’s request to summarize his sports career: “How to summarize? Two words, insist!”

On June 2, 2021, the World Badminton Federation announced that Fu Haifeng was inducted into the Badminton World Federation Hall of Fame along with two other Chinese athletes, Zhang Ning and Cai Yun.