【Badminton】Malaysian netizens launch a petition to support Li Zijia and Wu Jinwei

[Sports Road News]Malaysian Badminton Association President Mohamad Norza Zakaria announced on Friday (21st) that he had issued a two-year ban on world number 7 Li Zijia. And another Malaysian badminton player Wu Jinwei who was similarly punished at the end of October last year launched an online petition, asking the Malaysian Badminton Association not to punish the two players.

After the petition was launched, Li Zijia and former youth Olympic gold medalist Wu Jinli reprinted the petition in their personal Instagram feeds for a limited time. The goal of the petition was to collect 50,000 online signatures, but less than a day after the campaign started, more than 49,000 signatures had been collected by around 10 am Hong Kong time this morning. The number of signatures has since continued to increase, with the latest goal of collecting 75,000 online signatures.

The online petition mentioned that Li Zijia and Wu Jinwei are both extremely talented golfers who have made great contributions to Malaysia. They could have achieved good results for Malaysia in the past two years, so they will always support them, emphasizing that people all over the world are against the decision of the Badminton Association of Malaysia.

Since Li Zijia won the All England Championship in March last year, he felt that there has been no breakthrough in performance, so he decided to leave the Malaysian Badminton Association at the beginning of this month to seek a change, hoping to become a “free man” and “solo” development, which will help Bring changes and impact higher world rankings. However, the Badminton Federation of Malaysia failed to accept such a request from its players. On Friday, it decided to reject Li Zijia’s application to resign to become a free agent, and imposed a two-year ban on him. The relevant sanctions took effect on January 18 this year. In other words, the ban will not end until January 17, 2024.

Li Zijia, who debuted in 2016, is 23 years old. He helped Malaysia win a bronze medal in the Sudirman Cup last year. He also won 1 silver and 1 bronze in the men’s team event of the Asian Championships in 2018 and 2020. As for the 21-year-old Wu Jinwei, the gold medalist in women’s singles at the 2015 and 2018 World Youth Championships, she also won gold at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Wu Jinwei, who was suspended at the end of last year, decided to join the Malaysian professional team KLRC earlier this month, and is not willing to bow his head to return to the national team.

Source: Comprehensive foreign media

This article was originally published on “【Badminton】Malaysian netizens launch a petition to support Li Zijia and Wu Jinwei”