What’s greater: An Olympic/World Championship title or consistency through the season?

A name like Lee Chong Wei though, stands defiantly in way of asserting that coronation wins are more significant than circuit consistency. That is, a single Olympics or World Championship crown matters more than a whole bunch of the Tour wins when greatness, legacy and such other things get penned into tomes of triumph.

The Malaysian has neither of those big titles, and badminton will consider itself poorer for it. Though three Olympics silvers (that’s eight continuous years of making the biggest final in sport, 2008 through 2016) and as many World runners-up medals, point to a certain pinnacle of consistency on its own. The official consistency marker though is a staggering 69 titles on the Tour for him, safely pinning him as the greatest of all Tour times.

Lin Dan has 59, though the 2 Olympic gold and 5 World titles aside of those, place him in an exclusive stratosphere.

From recent vintage, Kento Momota has 29 titles on the circuit and 2 Asian championships besides his two World titles; Axelsen’s equivalent being 28, and 3 Europe titles, plus 2 World championships. The tall Dane however, noses ahead in the comparison with his Tokyo Olympic gold, cruelly for Momota in his backyard.

Kento Momota in action. (Reuters)

Yet, there was that period through 2019-20 when the Japanese automaton went on a title spree with 10 crowns on the Tour, his run again cruelly braked by a disorienting road accident in Malaysia. But while his peachy form of Sunday successes lasted, Momota seemed invincible. And his scalp even today when his game looks severely diminished, continues to carry high value for upstarts.

With men’s singles badminton not really indulging in the inelegant GOAT battle that might pit him against Lin Dan and which might see Chong Wei unnecessarily pipped, the ‘who’s greater’ debate between Axelsen – Momota crackles with far more combustible embers.

Add the always more exciting women’s singles pack to the argument – Chen Yufei (10 Tour titles), Tai Tzu Ying (14), Akane Yamaguchi (10), Carolina Marin (7), and you have sub-threads that can launch counters and counters to those counters all day. It’s truly brimming when you consider Marin has three World titles and an Olympic win, and Tour leader Tai Tzu Ying neither.

The pot properly stirs when you add PV Sindhu to the mix – 2 Olympic medals, but no gold yet and an unparalleled 5 World Championship medals – gold included, amongst the current lot. That’s elite consistency, which renders the rest of her Tour record redundant. Her Tour count is 4. But imagine having more World Championship medals than circuit wins; it’s remarkable peak performance over a span of a decade to show up at that one annointed August occasion to contest the business end of the World’s, over and over. The big-stage brag is hard to muffle out.

PV Sindhu celebrates on the podium during the medal ceremony on Monday. (REUTERS/Jason Cairnduff)

And because all of this isn’t enough to confound in the debate of Olympics cornonation Vs circuit consistency, there’s Korean An Se Young who has wracked up 11 Tour titles at age 20. Chen Yufei holds an edge over TTY in the Major finals, but does the Tokyo Games gold push the Chinese champ ahead of the Taiwanese? And because badminton should never ever take leave of graceful beauty, do Ratchanok Intanon’s four Tour titles and the 2013 World crown not even count?

Perception patterns are a fine thing to indulge in on a lazy Sunday. And like a kaleidoscope, with each turn of the triangle lenses, you could find different but equally gorgeous optical geometry, as the last one you left behind. Yet, those coronation or consistency counts point to priorities and mark out the big occasion temperaments definitively. You’d expect everyone peaks for the Olympics, though in badminton the whole flock travels to almost all the tournaments anyway so your Olympics draw might actually be simpler to negotiate than your regular 32-player field Super 1000.

The consistency vs coronation debate though, is perhaps best threadbared through the last-minute invitee to the seadon-ending World Tour Finals – Singaporean Loh Kean Yew.

In a 2022 season where the tearaway 2021 World Championship title winner Loh Kean Yew attempted to convert that transient one-off ascendancy of his Huelva title, into recurrent consistency, the answer to the question becomes even more elusive. LKY had 7 quarterfinals from 14 tournaments, and no title.

Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew, the reigning men’s singles champion, at IG Stadium in Delhi.(Express Photo0

But such is the tag of a World Champion that once crowned, you have to live with that halo doubling up as a constant, persistent spotlight at the back of your head that keeps reminding you of that one glorious day when you were top of the world, setting the highest standard for everything that follows. It’s excellent pressure to have frankly, for it is that forever poke of the World title that’s compelling LKY to take his game to the next level. It even set him off on a journey of self-discovery when he told CNA Singapore: “My personal goal now is to try and find myself first. I am in the process of finding my better self … on court.”

He would tell CNA how he’s searching to regrasp ‘chiong’ – which is translated to charging ahead. “That kind of self that goes (into a match) feeling like an underdog, that chiong (charge ahead) with no worries, just play, just enjoy while being focused, that confident guy. Loh would equate consistency with confidence. “Any athlete’s dream is to play with high confidence. At the World Champs it was good because I was super confident. I didn’t know that I was confident but I appeared confident. And I played without any fear.”

It would be a tad unrealistic to remain fearless and physically in top shape through the entirety of a season – with setbacks mounting every week, which makes that one breezy week-long run at the World Championship seem simpler. And then there is that eternal search to rediscover that same ditto form or feeling like from 2021 December, which might or might never reappear.

Loh has presented glimpses of that raw power and speed in his smashes, his unreally zipping defense in small bursts across matches. His bonsai backhand serve – it’s like a scrunched single-hand backhand release really – remains consistent. “Personally I have my own goal (for tournaments) but I don’t really have to tell anyone about it. The best is to know your own circumstances and just do it yourself. People don’t have to know,” he would tell CNA wisely.

He was willing to bide his time and stick to the process, looking at the bigger picture. “Ofcourse, the process won’t be that fast. It will definitely take some time. When it comes, it comes. Some people take one month … some people take three months, half a year, one year, two years,” he would add.

While the season has been mostly indifferent, the early exit from the 2022 World Championship took a bit of the pressure away. The chiong charge ahead remains his chosen path as he attempts to turn the World title coronation into a consistent reign – a reverse journey to all those who win every week, but miss out on the Biggie that will be remembered.