August 4, 2004
By Jennifer McIntyre
CBC Sports Online

Holding court with Denyse Julien

What happens when a 40-year-old reporter has a friendly game against the Grand Dame of Canadian badminton?

I never even saw it coming.

The shuttle whipped past me at about 200 kilometres per hour and landed with a decisive "thwack" on the court somewhere to my right.

On the other side of the net, Denyse Julien grinned impishly and fixed me with an appraising stare. Fair enough. After all, my experience with badminton is limited to a couple of matches in high school and occasional backyard tournaments with my little brother.

The 44-year-old Julien, on the other hand, has won 31 national badminton titles, represented Canada at 11 world championships, and was a member of the first badminton team ever to represent Canada at the Olympics, at the 1992 Barcelona Games, where she reached the round of 16 in women's singles.

She was recently in Kitchener, Ont. with the rest of the Olympic badminton team for a pre-Athens tuneup, and took some time out of her hectic schedule to give me some pointers -- and kick my butt.

I was certainly in for some surprises, first and foremost being the sheer speed of the game. Most North Americans, myself included, tend to view badminton as a leisurely pastime suitable for picnics or backyard barbecue parties.

But Olympic-calibre badminton could not be more different: At this level, it's a lightning-fast sport where the shuttle can move at up to 260 kilometres per hour, and players can cover several kilometres during the course of a match.

"With you, (or) someone that's hardly ever played the sport, the one thing is that first of all, you don't realize the speed of the game," said Julien. "Because when you talk about backyard badminton, that's like 'Ping, ping, ping.' At the level we play, it's very fast.

"So what happens is that you'll swing too fast. But I'm not going to play at my speed with a beginner.

"What you have to get used to is eye-hand coordination," she continued, correcting my grip. "It's very important because there's no bounce so you have no time. You have to make contact. And that's the main thing. When I teach kids it's the same thing. It takes them forever to do a serve. So sometimes you start with a foamy ball."

Thankfully, she opted not to bring out the foamy balls for me, and instead passed me a few easy underhand shots.

"You tend to swing too widely," she observed after a few moments, as I retrieved the shuttle from the floor yet again. "(Try to) shorten your swing, so it'll be easier to make contact. If you wind up too much and you're not used to it, you're going to lose the perception of where the shuttle is."

"It's not just finesse at the net -- you have to be smart and creative"

Denyse Julien takes a turn during the Olympic Torch Relay leg through Montreal in June.
There was a moment of silence broken only by the soft "plink" of our racquets, as we rallied back and forth. Julien barely broke a sweat, whereas I scrambled about with all the grace of a dog chasing a hornet.

"I think if you shorten your grip, it's going to be OK," she said tactfully as I bent to collect the shuttle once more. "If you swing really hard, it's just going to go everywhere. That's my view on teaching beginners: No big swing, and at the end, a quick hit."

I spent the next few minutes concentrating on this, which is easier said than done because one's overriding instinct, when assailed by a fast-moving airborne object, is to haul back and hit it as hard as possible.

"And that's when it goes everywhere," said Julien, "because the racquet is very light. It's not like a tennis racquet (which is) heavier, so you tend to overswing and totally miss the shuttle."

The lesson continues. Julien is polite and charming, but relentless.

"What I do with some kids is footwork," says Julien, who also coaches at Calgary's Glencoe Club. "I point to the net, then you come to the net, and I'll say, 'No, you got there with the wrong foot.' And you do it again without the shuttle so you don't think about two things: All you think about is your footwork.

"It's like if you play basketball, you have to learn to dribble, and then move with the ball. You have to learn the basics and then you move up."

Julien, who will be playing mixed doubles with Philippe Bourret and women's doubles with Anna Rice in Athens, admits that learning the basics and moving up came almost naturally to her.

"I competed in tennis 'til I was 12, and then I picked up badminton because we didn't have indoor courts in the wintertime," explained Julien, who grew up in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. "I started badminton and I really liked it.

"It's very quick and I like that. And I like the fact that you have to be powerful, and agile also. You have finesse shots, you have power shots -- it's a mix of a lot of things. I like that. It's not just finesse at the net -- you have to be smart, creative, and what I like also is that the people that play the sport, they play because they love it.

"There's no money in this sport. You survive, but you don't make money at it."

At least not in Canada. There may be money for the sport's biggest stars in Europe and Asia, but Julien admits to being many thousands of dollars in debt, since she, like most badminton players in Canada, must pay her own way to international tournaments.

For Julien, though, the financial haemorrhage will slow after Athens, where she will be the oldest badminton player by a long shot; badminton players tend to peak around 28. She has accepted a position as assistant badminton pro at the Atwater Club in Montreal for the next year and plans to play in several tournaments, as well.

"I still love competing," she said, "but I am finding it harder and harder to have to train every day. I have been doing it for 25 years so ... maybe I have a special heart."

The rest of the team is already in the van, so Julien smiles and wraps up our "lesson." I pick the shuttle off the floor one last time, and shake hands with Canada's Badminton Queen, who grins and accepts my offer to buy her a drink.

We head off, and I take solace in knowing that if Shuttle Retrieval ever becomes an Olympic sport, I'll be a shoe-in for the podium.

reprinted with permission