Taufik Hidayat once again told his story of wanting to be bribed by Malaysia to lose. This time, two Danish players, Antonsen and Hans, were shocked!
Taufik Hidayat guest starred on the podcast for the Danish badminton duo, Anders Antonsen and Hans-Kristian Solberg Vittinghus, called The Badminton Experience. The podcast just started, Taufik immediately told the moment he wanted to be bribed!
Initially, Antonsen asked about Taufik Hidayat’s best moment. Hans also grabbed, that in 2006 Taufik still won gold in the Asian Games and proved that he had not run out.
“There’s something funny about that if you read the news about the Asian Games. Problem match fixing“, said Taufik.
“There’s a manager from Lee Chong Wei. Early in the morning he came to my room and we talked. He said ‘hi Taufik, how much bonus does the Indonesian government give you if you win gold,’
“‘You’ve got gold in the Asian Games (2002 in Busan), Lee has never got it’, ‘how big is your bonus?’ he said. I shot him straight away, ‘what do you want?’
“I want you to lose to Lee. I doubled our bonus two, three times,”
“That’s crazy,” said Hans.
“I said back, ‘what if I pay Lee to lose?’ he said he didn’t want to,” continued Taufik.
“I don’t want to sell my country. Luckily this is in Doha, if you say this in Indonesia you are dead,”
“I was angry with Lexy, I said why your friend. Money is not everything for me,”
“Just look for the news, there are lots of them,” concluded Taufik, in which the Danish duo said ‘crazy’ several times.
Taufik then defeated Lee Chong Wei and won the 2006 Asian Games gold medal by defeating Lin Dan in the final.
Regarding Lee Chong Wei, the player apparently heard about it when he retired. Lee reportedly also contacted Taufik Hidayat to inquire about the truth and the manager’s identity was not disclosed to the public.
(aff/mrp)
