After my trip to Alberta I went to watch badminton with my sister and nephews. The Pan Am Games were on here in Toronto and my sister had bought tickets. Actually, she had three sets of tickets. The two extra ones came from her friends who, I suppose, couldn't go.
The event venue was up in Markham. As well as badminton they had table tennis and water polo there. Event venues were actually scattered all over the place. Some were as far north as Barrie, as far east as Oshawa and as far west as Hamilton, Milton and Welland.
The first set of tickets my sister had for badminton were for Sunday morning, July 12th, two days after the opening ceremony. We saw a number of preliminary matches including men's doubles, women's doubles and women's singles.
It was the first time I've ever seen badminton live. The skill level of the players was quite high. I'm guessing they would have ranked between the top 15-50 in the world maybe? It was fun to watch.
The players were quick and very flexible. They bent like pretzels arching to return the shuttlecocks on their backhands. Very impressive.
I was able to bring my dSLR in with 24-105 mm lens. I heard later that they were allowing lenses of up to 300 mm in.
I enjoyed myself and could have stayed longer. But my nephews got bored after 3-1/2 hours so we took off after watching Canadian, Michelle Li, win her singles match over Fatima Centeno Fuentes from El Salvador (21-4, 21-10).
Michelle would eventually claim gold in Women's Singles over fellow Canadian, Rachel Honderich, 21-15/21-9 the following Thursday. Yay, Canada!
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