Kevin Cordon carries on

Kevin Cordon from Guatemala is the surprise of this Olympics. I have followed his career for some time and will give some information about him.

Cordon had been a quite successful player in Central America and he has competed in some smaller European tournaments since 2006 and also qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he lost to Bao Chunlai from China. Thus, being from small Guatemala, he was always a curiosity, but a very respectable one, often being the only competitor from his country.

He made headlines during the 2011 world championships. In the first round he was scheduled to play against Chen Long, who was expected to be the opponent to top-seed Lee Chong Wei in the quarter-finals. But the first round match between a heavily favorited player from China and this player from Guatemala turned out to be quite interesting. Luckily the match is still available on YouTube and in my opinion still one of the most exciting badminton matches ever. If you haven’t watched it, I can recommend it.

Obviously Chen Long was heavily favoured to win the match. The staring odds for his win were only 1.005 at bet365 and 1.029 at pinnacle, for example, while odds for Cordon’s win were 20.0 at bet65 and 14.29 at pinnacle.

Cordon then went on to win two more matches against Henri Hurskainen from Sweden and Pabli Abian from Spain and faced Lee Chong Wei in the quarter-finals. Lee was then to strong, ending his run in the quarter finals.

After that he went back to playing smaller tournaments, many of them in the Americas, qualifying for the London and Rio Olympic Games and some world championships, but not advancing far in any of them. He also struggled with injuries during this time. So he was playing tournaments and whenever I saw him in the results, I had fond memories of his success in 2011, but I never thought he could repeat that.

Then came the Tokyo Olympics.

His win in the first game against Lino Munoz from Mexico was not unexpcted, their official head-to-head standing at 13-1 and the odds for his win being around 1.2. The final group match against 8th-seed Ng Ka Long Angus from Hong Kong was then a surprise win, odds for this win were in the range of 12.0, sbobet not even offering odds for his win. The following matches against Mark Caljouw from The Netherlands and Heo Kwang Hee from South Korea also saw Cordon as the underdog, although odds were not as big as before. Now he’s in the semi-final. Who would have thought, that the men’s singles’ semi-finalists come from Denmark, Indonesia, China and Guatemala. If only one had bet on that.

Of course he will be the underdog in both his remaining matches. A final against Chen Long would be the pinnacle, a deserved 10-year anniversary of their match at the world championships. We will see, where and if his run ends.