Badminton cbc.ca . At the elite level, it's an intense indoor racquet sport played using a tightly strung racquet, a shuttlecock and a net that stands over 150 centimetres high, almost twice as high as a tennis net. There are men's singles and doubles, women's singles and doubles and mixed doubles matches. Singles players rely on speed, agility and positional play, while power is the focus for doubles players.
Players can cover as many as six kilometres in one match.
It remains unclear whether that game was the precise precursor of a similar game that appeared five centuries later in ancient Greece, China, India and Japan. Kara Solmundson smashes at the 2000 Canadian International Badminton Tournament. Another story suggests that India, with its game called poona , was the birthplace of badminton. British soldiers stationed in India brought poona to Great Britain and it later spread to other European countries. Regardless of its origins, by the 1600s a game called battledore and shuttlecock was a popular children's game and soon became a favourite pastime of the European noble and leisured classes.