Lee Chong Wei
| Lee Chong Wei | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 李宗偉 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 李宗伟 | ||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Lǐ Zōngwěi |
Dato' Lee Chong Wei DSPN DB DCSM (born 21 October 1982) is a Malaysian professional badminton player. As a singles player, Lee was ranked first worldwide for 199 consecutive weeks from 21 August 2008 to 14 June 2012. He is the fourth Malaysian player after Rashid Sidek, Roslin Hashim and Wong Choong Hann to achieve such a ranking (since official rankings were first kept in the 1980s), and is the only Malaysian shuttler to hold the number one ranking for more than a year.
Lee is triple silver medalist at the Olympic Games, and the sixth Malaysian to win an Olympic medal. He won his first silver medal in 2008, also the first time a Malaysian had reached the finals in the men's singles event. This achievement earned him the title Dato', and led to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak describing him as a national hero. He repeated the achievement twice more in 2012 and 2016, thus making him the most successful Malaysian Olympian in history.
Lee was born in Bagan Serai, Perak, to a Malaysian Chinese family. In his early years, he favoured basketball, however his mother soon banned him from the game due to the searing heat of the outdoor basketball court. Lee began to learn badminton at the age of 11, when his father, who liked to play the game, brought him to the badminton hall. Attracting the attention of a local coach, the coach asked Lee's father if he could take him as a student. After receiving his father's consent, the coach began to train Lee after school. Discovered by Misbun Sidek, he was drafted into the national squad when he was seventeen years old.
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