Lin Dan
Badminton Player — born 1983
Lin Dan is a Chinese badminton player considered to be one of the greatest singles players of all time.
Lin Dan is a Chinese former professional badminton player whose 19-year competitive career produced two consecutive Olympic men's-singles gold medals (the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and the 2012 London Summer Olympics) and five BWF World Badminton Championships gold medals (2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013) — making him the most-decorated badminton player in international badminton history. He was born Lin Dan on October 14, 1983, in Longyan, Fujian, China. His father Lin Jianbin was a Longyan-area Chinese government-employee, and his mother Hou Suying was a homemaker.
His teenage and early-adulthood badminton career across 1995–2001 — across multiple Chinese-Fujian-Province-area regional badminton-academy training programs, particularly the Fujian Provincial Badminton Team training program — produced his late-1990s and early-2000s Chinese national-team badminton public profile.
His 2001 first Chinese national-team selection — at age 17 — and his subsequent 2002 first BWF World Tour appearance launched his early-2000s international badminton public profile. His 2004 Athens Summer Olympics first-round defeat to Singapore-area player Ronald Susilo (across which Lin failed to advance from the first round) shaped his later biographical narrative across his subsequent 2004–2012 Olympic-cycle revenge career.
His August 17, 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics men's-singles gold-medal victory over Malaysian Lee Chong Wei (21–12, 21–8) — at the Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium — produced his 2008 Chinese national-badminton public profile. The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics gold-medal victory was watched by approximately 6,000 attendees in the Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium and approximately 3.6 billion international TV viewers (the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics broadcast).
His August 5, 2012 London Summer Olympics men's-singles gold-medal victory over Malaysian Lee Chong Wei (15–21, 21–10, 21–19) — at the Wembley Arena in London — produced his 2012 international badminton-public-profile. The 2012 London Summer Olympics gold-medal victory made Lin the first male badminton player ever to win two consecutive Olympic men's-singles gold medals.
His subsequent 2013 BWF World Badminton Championships gold-medal victory in Guangzhou, China, and his 2014 Asian Games men's-singles gold-medal victory in Incheon, South Korea, produced his later international badminton public profile. He retired from competitive badminton on July 4, 2020, at age 36. He has been with Chinese former badminton player Xie Xingfang since 2010 (married 2012), and the couple has one son.
His name Lin derives from the Chinese surname Lin (one of the most-common Chinese family names). Lin has been continuously among the most-popular American girls' names since 1880.
About the name Lin
Gender: Male · Origin: English
From The Linden Tree Dell.