Woon Khe Wei calls time on career

Former Commonwealth Games gold medallist Woon Khe Wei has retired from international badminton, The Star reported yesterday.

The Malaysian daily said that the former world #9 took the decision after struggling with a knee injury for most of this year.  The injury at the Asian Team Championships in February kept her out of the Commonwealth Games and she re-injured it in September.

Woon first made headlines back in 2007, when she won the Asian Junior title in mixed doubles with Olympic silver medallist Tan Wee Kiong but all of her career highlights would be in women’s doubles.  When she was 19, she reached her first Grand Prix Gold semi-final in Macau.

In 2010, Woon began her most successful pairing, with Vivian Hoo.  In only their third tournament together, they reached the final of the Badminton Asia Championships.  They went on to win two Grand Prix Gold titles, as well as gold medals at the 2013 SEA Games and the following year at the Commonwealth Games.  In 2014, they also stunned 3-time All England winners Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang en route to Asian Games bronze in Incheon.

Woon told The Star that the highlight of her career was reaching the quarter-finals in her first and last Olympics, in Rio.  In fact, her last international match was at the World Championships this past summer, when she and Hoo played against Matsutomo and Takahashi, who had beaten them in the final 8 in Rio before going on to win the gold medal.  Both times, Hoo and Woon pushed the Japanese pair to 3 games.

Woon’s is the third retirement this year by a former top ten women’s doubles player, after the departures this past summer of Kim Ha Na of Korea and Denmark’s Kamilla Rytter Juhl.

We at Badzine wish Woon Khe Wei great success in her future endeavours.

Photo: Badmintonphoto