Badminton Europe’s second episode of the BEC Podcast will be published on Wednesday 22 November. Watch and listen to learn more about Croatian player Zvonimir Đurkinjak’s thoughts behind joining the Centre of Excellence.
For this episode, our communication manager Rasmus Bech sat down with COE player Zvonimir Đurkinjak and asked him questions about the move from Zagreb to Holbæk, Denmark.
- Well, my first thought was that I wanted to move away from Zagreb because I have been training there for all my career. So, I wanted to do something different.
- And of course, the sparring is a bit stronger in the centre than it is in Croatia because Croatia is not a big badminton country, so we don’t have many players, the Croatian says in the podcast.
Đurkinjak explains that, in Croatia, badminton is not that popular and he is still getting used to promoting himself and the sport as a brand.
Three months in
The European training centre has been implemented to secure an on-going development and further improvement of the high performance-level in Europe. It started up on 1 September with 16 permanent players from European countries.
- I like all of the players and we have fun. The facilities and everything else is very good.
Đurkinjak himself has had a very unlucky start with a back injury that has made it difficult for him to train regularly.
- But I was going to the trainings and watched the players do the training and it was good. Everyone, from what I saw, gave 100 percent on every training, so that was good.
Watch and listen to the second BEC Podcast from Wednesday on Badminton Europe’s Soundcloud and YouTube.