VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen Tien Minh of Viet Nam is seeded No 7 at the August's World Badminton Championship after a draw on Monday in London, England.

Despite no cash rewards, the world tournament lures all top athletes for the big points winners can earn that help them get their tickets to the London Olympics next year.

The participants are held to high standards. They are directly selected from the Badminton World Federation.

Minh, who jumped from ninth to seventh place in the world ranking last week, will face strong rivals there.

His first round opponent will be Misha Zilberman of Israel, who ranks No 71 in the world in the first round. The Vietnamese Olympian said though he may not take the men's title, he can at least enter the quarter-final round.

The world championships will kick off on August 8 and conclude six days later.

Events include men's singles, women's singles, men's doubles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles.

Last year China took all five titles with Chen Jin as the men's singles champion and Wang Lin winning the women's singles. Earlier, Du Jing and Yu Yang triumphed in the women's doubles category, while Cai Yun and Fu Haifeng grabbed the men's doubles. Zheng Bo and Jin Ma snatched the mixed doubles class.

China is currently the most successful nation in the history of the World Championships with 49 titles since 1977 (excluding 2010), but the Chinese are expected to be pushed all the way by players from Denmark, Indonesia, Korea and Malaysia.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News