World champion Loh Kean Yew: Training with Viktor Axelsen taught me to be more focused

Singapore has a new sporting hero.

Five years after Joseph Schooling became the island country's first Olympic champion, Loh Kean Yew was crowned the city-state's first badminton world champion after a stunning run to the men's title in Huelva, Spain, in December.

The 24-year-old Loh, with his boyish grin and charm, has caught the imagination in Singapore. But 2021 could have turned out very differently for him, if not for a setback early in the year followed by a training stint with Olympic champion Viktor Axelsen.

Loh began training with Axelsen after the latter's gold medal in Tokyo, and eventually defeated the world number one in the first round of the World Championships.

Speaking to Olympics.com's Sanjeev Palar in an interview conducted at the World Championships prior to his title win, Loh said of being part of Axelsen's group: "I try my best to learn whatever I can [from him] be it his focus, his consistency, his discipline, everything."

Slow start to the year

Loh began 2021 ranked 39th in the world, and at the BWF's 2020 season-ending tournaments held in Thailand in January, appeared rusty following the Covid pandemic disruption.

"I performed quite badly," Loh recalled. "Right after the first match I lost, I straight away realised that I'm totally not fit enough, I really need to work on my fitness and everything else. Only after that then I worked a lot on fitness leading up to the Olympics.

"Because of COVID, I only trained locally, so I didn't know where my standard was at compared to the rest of the players. In the world there were so many better players, so I was very motivated, I went back to Singapore and I started training very hard."

He worked his way into a qualifying spot for Tokyo 2020, where he served as Singapore's flag-bearer alongside Yu Mengyu. As an unseeded player, Loh was eliminated in the group stage after narrowly losing a three-game match against Indonesia's Jonatan Christie.

But that only made the Singaporean more determined, with the added trump card of having the training stint with Axelsen coming up.

Getting the opportunity to work with Axelsen

Loh had previously trained with Axelsen for a short period in Denmark, and their current training partnership had been in the works for a while – until Covid intervened.

"Viktor invited me in early 2020, end of 2019, he texted me and asked me if I'm interested in joining his training camp that will happen after the Olympics," Loh remembered.

"At the time there wasn't Covid yet, so we were [saying] after the Olympics we will talk about more details, which [would have been] August 2020."

The postponement of the Olympic Games also led Loh to wonder if the opportunity to train with Axelsen, who was last ranked outside the world top 10 in January 2015, had slipped by.

"During that 2020, 2021, I was like, 'Is it going to happen?' Like, I didn't know if he was still going to do it. So fast forward to 2021, after he wins his Olympics, he texted me again, and then he told me more details [about the plan]."

So it was put in place – after receiving approval from the Singapore Badminton Association, Loh joined Axelsen's team in Dubai.

Learning from the best

"I had a rough idea of how he trains," Loh said, referring to his prior experiences working with his Danish counterpart.

"I prepared myself – when he trains, he is very focussed and he doesn't like to joke around that much. And I'm the joking kind, a lot, during training," the Singaporean shuttler said. "So, I prepared myself that I should be very, very focussed and try my best to keep up with him.

"As I'm training with him, I actually try my best to learn whatever I can, be it his focus, his consistency, his discipline, everything. How he does his things, how he treats every training [session], every shot, every thing – like how he sees it, his focus, the way he handles the changes [in] situations."

But, Loh said, he had not outright asked the world's top-ranked player for advice directly.

"I try my best to observe and learn from the side because I think this is something that cannot be taught. I mean, of course you can ask him and he can give you advice, but this ultimately it's still how you see it, how you perceive it."

That appeared to have paid off when he first won a maiden BWF Super 500 title, in Saarbrucken, before reaching his first Super 1000 final in November, beating then then-world number one Momota Kento along the way before losing to Axelsen in the title match.

Overnight star

Loh's rise to fame in Singapore has been sudden.

In a country more known for its love of football, especially the English Premier League, Loh's breakthrough to the pinnacle of world badminton caught the imagination.

Much like Schooling before him from Rio 2016, Loh's return to the city was marked at the airport by a water salute. Indeed, when local business leaders found out the shuttler did not earn any prize money for his win, they put together a crowdfunded prize pool which has collected over $153,000 Singapore dollars (roughly U.S. $112,500 or 100,000 euros).

For Malaysian-born Loh, his climb to the top is validation of a long journey that began when he was four or five, playing outside his family's front gate in Penang with his brothers and neighbours.

Some media reports have said Loh was bullied as a child, something he was quick to correct in this interview – "I think in a lot of interviews I said I was bullied, but really it was just that [my seniors at school] didn't want to play with me, because I mean, I [was] a kid, I sucked."

Moving to Singapore aged 12 to enrol in the Singapore Sports School, the youngster did not enjoy his time at first. "It was the change of environment," he explained.

"I came to Singapore and I wasn't really happy with my mother at that time because she forced me to come here, like go to Singapore because I mean, it's a new place without any friend. It was a new place to me so it wasn't easy to like what I was given."

There were no thoughts of citizenship at the time – "To me, I thought I [could] just play for Malaysia and Singapore at the same time" – but it naturally happened once Loh realised he needed to become a citizen to represent Singapore at international Games.

"They have been taking care of me very well," Loh added of his adopted country.

That entire path has culminated in a world championship gold.

Changing the Singapore sporting landscape

While badminton is popular as a recreational activity, Loh is well aware that English Premier League (EPL) football and the National Basketball Association (NBA) remain more popular as spectator sports, or on television, for most Singaporeans.

"I hope that I can bring Singapore sports [to the fore]," he said. "Getting more people to be involved with sports, be it watching like people watch soccer, the EPL (Premier League). Hopefully one day badminton is going to be a sport like that, and hopefully Singapore will focus more on sports as well.

"I hope more people pick up the sports and enjoy it, or even become professional players and compete at a high level. I want to inspire younger generations."

Aside from being a role model, Loh also wants to stamp his mark in the history books – repeatedly.

He has already taken the first step, but wants more.

"In Singapore, we used to have Ronald [Susilo] and Derek [Wong] in singles, and I want to surpass them. I want to create history that's even better than what they did.

"I love it when I see "Singaporean Loh creates history" [in headlines]. I always want to recreate history, even."