The Brazilian Olympic Committee brought one of the world’s greatest badminton coaches and scholars, Denmark’s Kenneth Larsen, to the country for a course with professionals in the modality. Organized by the Brazilian Olympic Institute (IOB), the educational arm of the COB, the International Coaching Camp, which is part of the Brazilian Coaching Academy (ABT) programme, is taking place this week in Americana (SP), the city ​​that houses the training center of the Brazilian Confederation of Badminton (CBBd).

Students on this internship are part of the ABT High Performance Sports Course (CEAR). After going through a year focused on the field of sports development through four online modules and a face-to-face internship, held in Teresina (PI) with Canadian coach Jennifer Lee, the group is now carrying out the second stage, this one focused in the area of ​​athletic development. In this context, the choice of Kenneth for the moment is due to his experience and his solid background: in addition to being a former coach of the Danish national team, he is a tutor and researcher at the Badminton World Federation (BWF ), Master in Philosophy of Learning and PhD in Social Psychology.

“It’s the first time I’ve come to Brazil and I’m very happy with this exchange of knowledge. The coaches have different backgrounds and it’s interesting that I can pass on to them what I know about badminton. It was a very fruitful experience,” commented Kenneth.

The stage of this international internship with the Dane is divided between theoretical and practical courses focused on the systematization of training and sports technique, especially in doubles games. For Fabiana da Silva, an Olympic athlete from the Brazilian badminton team who is in the process of reorienting her career, the knowledge transmitted is interesting for encouraging badminton sports in Brazil.

“Here we can acquire technical and tactical knowledge to apply in our reality, which is very diverse, after all, here we have teachers from all over Brazil. I believe that an exchange like this is extremely important, with a reference in the modality, because we can help the development of Brazilian badminton,” he stressed.

Photo: Celio Messias/COB