r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/DearEmphasis4488 • 14d ago

Video The process of making badminton shuttlecocks from raw feathers

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u/NoShameInternets 14d ago

Like 10 years ago in my 20's I worked with a guy whose son was an Olympic level badminton player. Every day at lunch my coworker would vanish for an hour. One day he invited me to join him to play badminton at lunch, and we drove 5 minutes up the road to a huge building I had never noticed. It was one of the national training centers for the Olympic team, located in this random suburb in the Northeast US. Imagine ~eight courts lined up with a second level surrounding it with seating. It was gorgeous.

They greeted the guy by name as he walked in, grabbed a couple of rackets and pulled out some of these feathered shuttlecocks (not the good ones, though... the ones they use when people like me are playing, but still night and day compared to the shit we used in school).

I was pretty good in high school. I came in second in the tournament we had annually. I could beat the gym teacher who could basically smoke everyone else.

I scored maybe three points in the 45 minutes we were there after sprinting back and forth across the court the entire time while he took maybe 20 steps, total.

Anyway, I found out what it means to actually be good at badminton that day.

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u/gra_lala 14d ago

At least you found out playing an Olympic level player. I found out when I played against a grandmother at the local sports club (in my defence, a rather young one). I was in my school's badminton team, too.

I do feel bad for the geese though. Growing up I never really thought about the geese. I actually assumed the feathers were plastic, like everything else in my country

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u/NoShameInternets 14d ago

The dad of an Olympic level player* but still, the genes were on the court!

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u/gra_lala 14d ago

Ah, missed that. Maybe the granny was the mother of an Olympic level player. One can dream

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u/NoShameInternets 14d ago

That’s the spirit!

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u/Polymathy1 14d ago

How did the feathered shuttlecocks compare to the plastic ones?

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u/derpkoikoi 14d ago

I know that you're exaggerating for comedic effect, but surely you were moving him around the court more than that? Unless you literally could not clear the length of the court and were basically just hitting it back to him.

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u/NoShameInternets 14d ago

He was hitting it in a way that my only real option for a return (at my skill level) was well within his reach.

A lot of people don't realize how small badminton courts actually are. They're only a little over half the size of a tennis court, and the reach of a badminton racket is longer than a tennis racket.