Any win over one of the top Chinese players is great for me” says the 29 year old. Ella who played in the Sydney Olympics but missed Athens as she was having her daughter is now looking forward to playing in Beijing and is hoping there will be other members of her team to join her as there are a few who are very close including the ladies doubles. Ella started playing when she was about 9 years old as both parents were coaches, has no intention at the moment to think about retiring.   “I feel so good at the moment and it’s like I have just started to play at a level I want to be. Of course it depends on injuries and also I would like to have more children but at the moment I just want to see if I can keep improving my badminton”.

Through a translator I had a quick chat with Russian Coach, Nikolay Peshehonov, about badminton in his country. You have been the Russian coach for 6 months now, there have been a number of good results and rankings for your players,is the level of badminton good in Russia and do you have a lot of players in Russia coming through. The players who are currently in the team are older and soon in Russia they will be looking at a large group of young players to train and work towards the next Olympics in 2012. There is a lot of work that is needed to be able to compete especially on the technical side of the game.

Is badminton a popular sport in Russia?
Yes it’s very big at the fun and social level but it is very hard to compete with the big sports in Russia. But we are getting a lot more players now.

Do you top players have good training facilities?
No, we don’t have a specific badminton stadium but we make do, also it’s very hard to train with the weather conditions especially in the winter.