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The Olympic Games happen every 4 years and it is considered the best sporting event in the world! Thousands of the best athletes from over 200 countries come together to compete in a total of 40 different sports across both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
But, how do you actually qualify to compete in the Olympic Games?
The Olympic qualification period can be a gruelling process for athletes, so we’ll be sharing how it all works for the sport of badminton… and it’s probably a lot more complicated than you think!
There are 172 places in total available across all 5 events – 86 for women and 86 for men. This was the same as the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
These places are distributed across the 5 events as follows:
As you can see, it does favour singles players – this is probably the only time in badminton it’s easier being a singles player!
And if you’re good at maths, you may have noticed that the above numbers do not add up to the full 172 places… we will explain why this is later!
The Olympic qualification period is a 12-month period that pushes players to the max!
For Paris 2024, this qualification period was from 1st May 2023 to 28th April 2024. Athletes trying to qualify will often play as many competitions as they can in order to maximise their ranking position and therefore increase their chance of qualifying for the Olympics.
At the end of this period, the official ‘Paris Ranking List’ will be finalised (this was published on 30th April 2024 for the Paris Olympics). This list is what determines who gets to go, though it’s not certain that you will go if you make it on the list – more on this later!
The way it works is similar to the world ranking whereby the ranking points from your best 10 tournaments over the last year are added up to give your total ranking. For the Olympics, this will be the top 10 tournaments during the 12-month qualification period that will give you your final Olympic ranking position.
💡 Not only are players fighting to qualify, but they’re also fighting for seeding which can be very important to avoid the best players in the early rounds!
Well that would make the article a lot more simple, but no it’s not!
Firstly, as we mentioned earlier, there are still 6 spots out of the 172 that were not distributed in the 5 events. This is because for each gender, only 83 of 86 of those places are given based on the ranking list. Another one is reserved for the host country and the last two for ‘Universality places’.
Universality places are given to encourage a wider representation for athletes from smaller countries that may have struggled to secure their spot through the standard qualification process.
For the singles events, there has to be at least two athletes from each of the 5 BWF Continental Confederations so that all continents are represented. And, these players need to be ranked 1-250 in the Race To Paris Ranking List at the end of the qualification period.
For the doubles event, it is a similar concept but there needs to be at least one pair from each of the 5 BWF Continental Confederations. When there’s only 16 spots available to begin with, that makes it a lot harder to get a place!
In the singles events, there is only one space available per country or NOC (National Olympic Committee). This is UNLESS you have 2 or more players ranked between 1-16, in which case you are allowed 2 spots for the country.
For the doubles events, the same applies but you only get 2 spots if you have 2 or more pairs ranked in the top 8!
AND, a maximum of only 8 different athletes per gender from the same NOC across all the events is allowed to compete.
Now that was a lot of information!
But as you can see, there’s quite a lot of different barriers you need to pass in order to secure your spot at the Olympics, especially if you’re from a stronger country.
For example, if you just look at the BWF world rankings for women’s singles, there are already 4 players from China in the top 10 alone, and 5 in the top 16. So out of these 5 players, only 2 can actually go… which just shows that you can be among the very best in the world, but still aren’t able to qualify for the Olympics!
As you can imagine, since there are less top level players at the Olympics, the depth of strength will be less than the World Championships for example.
Yes, they do! As if the above criteria wasn’t challenging enough, there are even more potential barriers!
For example, often countries are limited to how many players they can send to these events, and associations have the power to choose who goes to them, irrelevant of ranking! So it comes into question how much power associations have over who goes to the Olympics.
We’ve seen some controversial decisions being made in badminton regarding this, and in other sports too!
2 examples from the 2024 badminton Olympic qualifications are:
Every country has their own policies around this but it does mean that even if a player or pair is ranked higher and qualifies (on merit), they might not necessarily end up going to the Olympic Games!
At the start of the Olympic qualification period we were in a position to be able to try to qualify, being ranked 28 in the world. However, we unfortunately didn’t manage to get the results we needed.
Because of the nuances, every Olympic cycle can be different in terms of the rankings needed to go. This year a men’s doubles pair ranked 49 in the world at the end of the qualification period qualified, however a pair ranked 17 in the world in mixed doubles didn’t make the initial list!
It’s complicated, we know! But we hope this has given you an insight into the Olympic qualification process for badminton and just how much time and resources players need to dedicate to this year long period of time, and hoping that it will all be worth it for them!
If you found this interesting, you might also like to check our our article on ‘How Much Money Do Professional Badminton Players Make?’ here where we discuss all the different income streams and expenses badminton players might have and how much this is within different world ranking categories!