Lee Hyun-il ( ko, 이현일; born 17 April 1980) is a former

badminton Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players p ...

player from

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eas ...

. He is a former

World In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

and

Asian Championships An Asian Championship is a top level international sports competition between Asian athletes or sports teams representing their respective countries or professional sports clubs. List of Championships (Summer Olympic Sports) ;Aquatics * Asia ...

bronze medalist, and was part of South Korean team that won the

2003 Sudirman Cup The 2003 Sudirman Cup was the 8th tournament of the World Mixed Team Badminton Championships of Sudirman Cup. It was held from March 18 to March 23, 2003 in Eindhoven, Netherlands. South Korea won in this eighth edition of the championship against ...

as well the gold medals at the 2002 and 2014 Asian Games.

Career

2002 Asian Games

Lee competed in the 2002 Asian Games where he showed signs of promise as an ace singles player for team Korea. In the men's team event, Lee dominated the opponents he faced in the tourney, completing all three matches less than 30 minutes and allowing only seven points in the semifinals and eight in the final. Team Korea eventually won their first men's team gold medal since

1986 The year 1986 was designated as the International Year of Peace by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 **Aruba gains increased autonomy from the Netherlands by separating from the Netherlands Antilles. **Spain and Portugal enter ...

when

Park Joo-bong Park Joo-bong (Hangul: 박주봉; Hanja: 朴柱奉; born 5 December 1964) is a former badminton player from South Korea who excelled from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s. Career Park is one of the most successful players ever in the Wor ...

and Kim Moon-soo led the team.

2003 Sudirman Cup

At the

held in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, Lee helped his team to win its third Sudirman Cup title, winning all three singles matches. Though many great doubles players from South Korea had won numerous international competitions, team Korea had always struggled to win the

Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the A ...

and Sudirman Cup competitions due to the lack of top men's singles players. However, Lee, the winner of the 2003

Swiss Open The Omega European Masters is the Swiss stop on professional men's golf's European Tour, and in 2009 it became the first event in Europe to be co-sanctioned by the Asian Tour. Founded as the Swiss Open in 1923, the tournament was prefixed with Eu ...

, showed spectacular performances through the Sudirman Cup tournament, not dropping a single set. In the semifinal, Lee defeated 2001 World Championship runner-up and 2001 All England Open semifinalist

Peter Gade } Peter Høeg Gade (born 14 December 1976 in Aalborg, Denmark)BWF World Ranking
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2-0, which led his team to a 3-2 victory over Denmark. Lee won another 2-0 upset victory over world number one ranked Chen Hong in game 1 of the South Korea's final team event against China.

2004 Olympics

Lee competed in the 2004 Summer Olympics, which was his first Olympic appearance. Lee easily defeated Stuart Brehaut of Australia in the first round. However, he was surprisingly eliminated in the second round by Boonsak Ponsana of Thailand.

2006

At the 2006 IBF World Championships held in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

, Spain, Lee captured his first World Championship medal in the men's singles event. He defeated Chetan Anand, Jan Fröhlich, Eric Pang and Chen Jin before losing to Bao Chunlai of China in the semifinals.

2008 Olympics

In 2008, he defeated top rank players

Lin Dan Lin Dan (born 14 October 1983) is a Chinese former professional badminton player. He is a two-time Olympic champion, five-time World champion, as well as a six-time All England champion. Widely regarded as the greatest badminton player of a ...

and

Lee Chong Wei Datuk Lee Chong Wei (; born 21 October 1982) is a Malaysian former badminton player. As a singles player, Lee was ranked first worldwide for 349 weeks, including a 199-week streak from 21 August 2008 to 14 June 2012. He is the fifth Mala ...

in the Korea Open. He participated in the Beijing Olympics, where he reached the semi-finals before being defeated by world number one,

from Malaysia, and then being beaten by Chen Jin of China in the bronze-medal playoff.

Retirement and comeback

After the 2008 Olympics, Lee announced his retirement from international badminton and only competed in national competitions. However, in April 2010 he came out of retirement after much persuasion from the coach and teammates to fill the void of singles players in the Korean national squad. In May 2010, Lee participated in the

2010 Thomas Cup The 2010 Thomas & Uber Cup was the 26th tournament of the Thomas Cup and 23rd tournament of the Uber Cup, the most important and most prestigious badminton tournaments in men's and women's team competition, respectively. The 2010 championships mar ...

and played in two singles matches.

2012 Summer Olympics

Lee lost to Chinese

Chen Long Chen Long (; ; born 18 January 1989), is a Chinese former professional badminton player. He is the 2016 Olympic champion, two-time World champion, and an Asian champion. Chen was a former World number 1, occupying the top men's singles ranki ...

in the badminton bronze-medal playoff on 5 August 2012.

2019

Lee who joined the Miryang City Hall team since 2018, decided to retire from the team on 22 November 2019.

Achievements

World Championships

''Men's singles''

Asian Games

''Men's singles''

Asian Championships

''Men's singles''

Asian Junior Championships

''Boys' singles''

BWF World Tour (1 title)

The BWF World Tour, announced on 19 March 2017 and implemented in 2018, is a series of elite badminton tournaments, sanctioned by Badminton World Federation (BWF). The BWF World Tour are divided into six levels, namely World Tour Finals, Super 1000, Super 750, Super 500, Super 300 (part of the HSBC World Tour), and the BWF Tour Super 100. ''Men's singles''

BWF Superseries (1 title, 3 runners-up)

The BWF Superseries, launched on 14 December 2006 and implemented in 2007, is a series of elite badminton tournaments, sanctioned by Badminton World Federation (BWF). BWF Superseries has two level such as Superseries and Superseries Premier. A season of Superseries features twelve tournaments around the world, which introduced since 2011, with successful players invited to the Superseries Finals held at the year end. ''Men's singles'' : BWF Superseries Finals tournament : BWF Superseries Premier tournament : BWF Superseries tournament

BWF Grand Prix (18 titles, 11 runners-up)

The BWF Grand Prix had two levels, the

BWF Grand Prix and Grand Prix Gold BWF may refer to: Sports organisations Badminton * Badminton World Federation, an international governing body for badminton Professional wrestling * Brazilian Wrestling Federation, a Brazilian Professional wrestling promotion. * British Wrestling ...

. It was a series of badminton tournaments sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) which was held from 2007 to 2017. The World Badminton Grand Prix has been sanctioned by the International Badminton Federation from 1983 to 2006. ''Men's singles'' : BWF Grand Prix Gold tournament : BWF & IBF Grand Prix tournament

BWF International Challenge/Series (5 titles, 3 runners-up)

''Men's singles'' : BWF International Challenge tournament : BWF International Series tournament

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Hyun-il 1980 births Living people Badminton players from Seoul South Korean male badminton players Badminton players at the 2004 Summer Olympics Badminton players at the 2008 Summer Olympics Badminton players at the 2012 Summer Olympics Olympic badminton players of South Korea Badminton players at the 2002 Asian Games Badminton players at the 2006 Asian Games Badminton players at the 2010 Asian Games Badminton players at the 2014 Asian Games Asian Games gold medalists for South Korea Asian Games silver medalists for South Korea Asian Games bronze medalists for South Korea Asian Games medalists in badminton Medalists at the 2002 Asian Games Medalists at the 2006 Asian Games Medalists at the 2010 Asian Games Medalists at the 2014 Asian Games World No. 1 badminton players