(Beijing, October 12) "Beijing University of Technology Gymnasium is the best venue I have ever seen at the previous Olympics." Punch Gunalan, first vice-president of Badminton World Federation (BWF), spoke highly of the venue unreservedly.

As a BWF official, Gunalan has shuttled between Olympic badminton venues since badminton was admitted to the Olympics in 1992. "It's the best venue I have ever seen, all the venues for the previous Olympics were temporarily modified and had problems more or less, but this venue was specially designed according to the characteristics of badminton."

Also, Gunalan sang high praise for the organization of this tournament, "I inspected the venue three weeks before the opening of the competition at the Athens Olympics, but it was not fully ready. However, this venue in Beijing has been put to use within one year away from the opening of the Olympics. It can be said that the work of BOCOG and Chinese Badminton Association (CBA) has been almost perfect."

Nevertheless, "almost perfect" does not mean "perfect", Gunalan also made some improvement suggestions-for example, the hall for press conference and the media studios are not spacious enough to receive all the journalists coming here for interviewing during the Olympics.

"BOCOG has promised that it will make improvement as soon as possible. Everything has a start, we may say that Beijing has made a good start." Said Gunalan.