Moves to Dubai: Formerly quarantined Dane becomes trainer for Antonsen
From now on, it will be the former badminton player Joachim Persson, who will lead Anders Antonsen to success.
On Wednesday evening, TV 2 Sport writes that Anders Antonsen is bringing in Joachim Persson as coach in his new setup in Dubai.
Neither Antonsen himself nor Persson wanted to comment on the news to TV 2.
39-year-old Joachim Persson is a former professional badminton player. During his career, he helped win silver at the men’s team WC, Thomas Cup, as well as three gold medals at the EC for mixed teams.
In 2019, he was handed an 18-month ban from all badminton by the Badminton International Federation (BWF) for breaching match-fixing rulesas in two cases he did not report inquiries about fixing matches.
BWF found no evidence that manipulation had actually taken place with badminton results in the case.
The verdict was based on two breaches of failure to report inquiries about match-fixing, as the rules are such that the BWF must be notified if a player is offered to fix a match or otherwise hears about match-fixing.
The verdict was also based on two breaches of insufficient cooperation with BWF, and the Dane did not want to hand over his bank statements, among other things.
By moving his training setup to Dubai, Anders Antonsen is following in the footsteps of his compatriot Viktor Axelsen, who did the same after his Olympic triumph in 2021.
Antonsen thus withdraws from Badminton Denmark’s elite program and can no longer have a Badminton Denmark national coach as head coach, receive financial support or make use of Team Denmark’s experts in everyday life.
According to Badminton Denmark, Antonsen and Axelsen will still train with the National Elite Training Center in Brøndby 13-15 weeks a year. He is also still relevant for tournaments such as the EC and WC.
