(Beijing, October 14) After five days of competition the "Good Luck Beijing" 2007 International Badminton Invitational Tournament came to an end with success on October 14.

With the withdrawal of a number of foreign players from the Beijing invitational due to various reasons, Nguyen Tien Minh of Vietnam became the only foreigner among the 119 players participating in the tournament. As Punch Gunalan, First Vice-President of the Badminton World Federation (BWF) put it, the event served as a test run of the event organization and operation of the venue in the first place. In other words, as far as the number of players in each round satisfied the needs for competition management, the competition level was not that important.

As the host country China sent a star-studded field to the tournament including all the world's top-seeded players and Olympic hopefuls.

Lin Dan and Xie Xingfang won the men's and women's singles titles as expected. While world No. 1 Gao Ling/Zheng Bo lost to Zhang Yawen/Xie Zhongbo in the mixed doubles final, to the surprise of all. The men's and women's doubles titles went to Cai Yun/Fu Haifeng and Wei Yili/Zhang Jawen respectively.

Nguyen Tien Minh, who walked away with the bronze medal in the men's singles, was happy to be able to play with world No. 1 Lin Dan in the semifinals. Although he lost the match he was satisfied with his own performance. Commenting on the venue at the Beijing University of Technology, he thought it was the best Olympic venue for badminton he had ever seen.

As a warm-up for the upcoming Olympic Games the Beijing invitational saw top Chinese players going all out to vie for good results at this future Olympic venue. As Lin Dan concluded at a post-final press conference, "I have already sensed the Olympic atmosphere here."