Ahn Se-young, Lin Dan & Badminton Scandals: A Career Lesson

[스포티비뉴스=신인섭 기자] The Chinese media began to offer advice that went beyond jealousy.

China’s Xinhua News Agency reported on the 22nd (Korean time), “Ahn Se-young won her 11th title of the season in the Badminton World Tour (BWF) World Tour Finals 2025 women’s singles final,” and added, “With this, she is being compared to Chinese men’s singles superstar Lin Dan, who is widely recognized as the best player in history.”

Ahn Se-young’s performance this year is unrivaled. The Badminton World Federation (BWF) also described Ahn Se-young’s season as ‘the best ever’ and focused on three milestones through its official SNS: tie for most wins in a single season, highest winning percentage, and new season prize money record. Hangzhou itself became a declaration of a new era.

In particular, in the BWF World Tour Finals 2025 Women’s Singles final held in Hangzhou on the 21st, she won 2-1 (21-13, 18-21, 21-10) in a close match that lasted 1 hour and 36 minutes against world number 2 Wang Zhiyi (China), and rose to the top, accumulating 11 gold medals.

With this, Ahn Se-young matched the record for most wins (11 wins) in a single season for men and women set by Japan’s Kento Momota in 2019. This is an unprecedented achievement for a female singles player. Out of the 16 international competitions he participated in, he took the top spot 11 times, and his season record was 73 wins and 4 losses. The 94.8% winning rate is the highest in badminton history, surpassing Lin Dan (2011), Lee Chong-wei (2010), and Viktor Axelsen (2022).

The record didn’t stop there. Ahn Se-young’s accumulated prize money this season, including the $240,000 prize money from this tournament, is $1,003,175. He became the first badminton player, male or female, to exceed $1 million in prize money in a single season. This amount is almost double the income from the 2023 season, which was his previous highest record. His cumulative career prize money has already exceeded $2.5 million, making him the highest among active players.

However, China’s Xinhua News Agency began to criticize with jealousy, saying, “In the history of badminton, there are several players who showed the potential to become the best players, but failed to maintain that competitiveness.”

He added, “Momota’s prime came to an abrupt end due to a suspension due to gambling and a subsequent car accident. Tae Tzu-ying, who had tremendous talent, had difficulty managing her physical strength, and in the case of Lee Chong-wei, the reason he did not win the world champion title was due to luck and psychological factors.”

At the same time, he said, “The only players in the history of women’s singles who can match the claim that Ahn Se-young is the best player of all time are China’s two-time Olympic champion Jiang Ning and Spain’s three-time world champion Carolina Marin,” and argued that she should show more to surpass them.