Badminton: Cold reality for doubles combo

By DAVID LEGGAT

ATHENS - The playing future of New Zealand's best badminton doubles combination will be decided in the next few weeks.

Dan Shirley and Sara Runesten Petersen have some hard thinking ahead as they consider whether to carry on after their Olympic Games mixed doubles campaign came to an end yesterday.

The pair, a former world No 6 combination, lost in the round of 16 to the game's seventh-ranked team Jonas Rasmussen and Rikke Olsen, of Denmark, 14-15, 9-15. There is the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006 to consider but the pair, who have been a team since being pitched together for the world championships in Seville in 2001, won the bronze in that event before, at Manchester two years ago.

So it's down to considering the hard reality of playing a sport which does not create millionaires.

"We've got a few decisions to make," said Shirley, whose mother, aunt and grandmother all represented New Zealand. "Obviously New Zealand Badminton wants us to stay together till Melbourne. But I'm not really certain. It's a huge commitment. This [the Olympics] is great but there aren't a lot of rewards."

The 25-year-old Waitemata left-hander said the lure of getting to the Olympics was one thing, competing was the ultimate, but essentially it was done for the love of the sport.

Now that the incentive of the Olympic stage has been achieved, the pair need to reconsider their future as a combination.

"We'll see when we get back. We'll have a chat to the coaches," Danish-born Runesten Petersen, who has been living in New Zealand on and off since 1995, said.

"We've trained hard this year. It takes a lot of work and we'll have to see what the financial situation is and what the plans are."

The pair set off for the Olympics with the strong desire to win their opening game to take something tangible from the competition. They accomplished that in convincing fashion against Canadians Philippe Bourret and Denyse Julien. on Sunday.

Had they beaten the Danes yesterday they would have been up against world No 1s Kim Dong Moon and Ra Kyung Min of Korea.

If this is to be the end of Shirley and Runesten Petersen's highly successful partnership, that would have been the perfect finish.

"We were a bit unlucky in the first set, but they kept us under pressure and we didn't have an answer," Shirley said.