Europe's 20 year wait

Virtue or not, patience is starting to wear incredibly thin across Europe as far as waiting to celebrate a YONEX All England men’s singles title goes.

The champagne has been chilling on ice for some 20 years now. The big 2.0. 20 years since Peter Gade’s heroics against Indonesia’s Taufik Hidayat at the Arena Birmingham in 1999.

It is difficult to imagine such a wait considering the depth and breadth of European talent that has poured into the men’s game over all those years.

Even Peter Gade – and it is his record after all that everyone has eyes on - would admit that he is keener than most to see the milestone broken, and quickly.

Jan O Jorgensen’s historic title win in China – Europe’s first ever in 30 years of the China Open - in 2016, and on the back of a YONEX All England final, was rightly considered a new dawn.

There was talk of 2017 being ‘the year’ – experts said there ‘was no better chance’ ; 2018 was to spring new hope until Viktor Axelsen, then World Champion and World number one, was forced to sit out last year’s challenge due to injury.

Whilst Spain, Denmark, Russia and England have forged 13 title winning campaigns in other disciplines since the turn of the millennium, the coveted men’s singles trophy at the YONEX All England remains as elusive as ever.

To compel matters further, the 2018 Championships saw an entire all-Asian line-up from Round Two onwards.

The women have rewritten history, so now it’s time for the men to stand up and be counted surely?

The threat remains in red and white. You’d expect nothing less from a nation boasting the legendary likes of Hoyer, Frost, Pri and Kops but there is an overwhelming reliance on the Danish these days as the look to emulate the most recent legend of Gade.

Axelsen leads a pack of four Danes in the world top 25 at present and, remarkably, all of Denmark’s main protagonists feature in the same lower half of the 2019 YONEX All England draw.

England’s Rajiv Ouseph and Holland’s Mark Caljouw complement the Danish mission albeit from a distance outside the world top 30.

These days, just 10 players from four European nations fill the world top 50 and there’s not a Swede amongst them. Europe’s new era does not run particularly deep.

For Europe then, however impatient they may get, patience may just be a virtue they will be have to learn to live with for just a little bit longer if the Danes misfire.

Take a walk away from Denmark, and its thin pickings though.

Brice Leverdez, the mastermind behind so many crowd pleasing moments in Birmingham - not least his duel with Lee Chong Wei - is currently best of Europe’s rest at 26th in the world.