The Scottish badminton community will get the chance to pay tribute to its greatest ever player when Imogen Bankier contests national championships next month.
The 28-year-old Glaswegian, who confirmed her retirement from the international game just last month, having taken a sabbatical in 2015 to start developing a business career, is aiming to win a 16th national title.
The only player ever to take part in a World Championship final while representing Scotland will pair up once again in the mixed doubles with Robert Blair, who also has a World Championship silver but earned it during a spell when he was playing for England.
The Commonwealth Games bronze medallists will go in as firm favourites to defend their title with Bankier seeking to win the event for the 10th successive time having done so with three different partners in that period and Anne Smillie, chief executive of Badminton Scotland, urged supporters of the sport to turn up at the Bell’s Sports Centre in Perth for the championships from February 5-7 to show their appreciation for her achievements.
“The Yonex Scottish National Championships will provide a great opportunity for fans to salute Imogen Bankier’s fabulous career,” she said.
“But it is also a chance to see how the next wave of Scotland players perform against the defending champions in all five events and I am looking forward to witnessing that.”
Bankier will not, however, defend her women’s doubles title since Kirsty Gilmour, with whom she won it last year, is partnering Rebekka Findlay, the youngster who was one of last year’s beaten finalists as she bids to win that event for a fourth successive year.
Gilmour, who got her Olympic year underway in winning fashion when she beat local qualifier Yin Fun Lim 21-16, 18-21, 21-14 in the first round of the Victor Far East Malaysian Masters in Penang yesterday, is also aiming to become the first woman in more than 20 years to win a fifth successive singles title.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here