Badminton was known in ancient times; an early form of the sport was played in ancient Greece. In India, the game was called “Poona” during the 18th century, and British Army officers stationed there took a competitive Indian version back to England in the 1860s, where it was played at country houses as an upper class game. Isaac Spratt, a London toy dealer, published a booklet, “Badminton Battledore — a new game” in 1860, but unfortunately no copy has survived.

The new sport was launched in 1873 at the Badminton House, Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of Beaufort. During that time, the game’s official name became “Badminton”.

Until 1887 the sport was played in England under the rules popular in India. The Bath Badminton Club standardized the rules and made the game applicable to English ideas. The basic regulations (规则) were draw up in 1887. In 1893, the Badminton Association of England published the first set of rules according to these regulations, similar to today’s rules. They also started the All England Open Badminton Championships, the first badminton competition in the world, in 1899.

Badminton World Federation (BWF) was founded in 1934 with Canada, Denmark, England, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales as its founding members. India joined as a member in 1936. The BWF now governs international badminton and works in cooperation with regional governing bodies to improve the sport of badminton around the world.

While originated in England, international badminton has traditionally been controlled by a few Asian countries, plus Denmark from Europe. China, Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia are among the nations that have consistently produced world-class players in the past few decades and influenced competitions on the international level.

Japan's prime minister encouraged the decision to ban viewers, even family members, by issuing a state of emergency order in Tokyo earlier this month in response to rising COVID-19 case numbers.

From the perspective of sports psychologists, an Olympics without fans is a real-life science experiment that is helping researchers and clinicians to comb through the true impact of a crowd of fans on its players—and on viewers at home. The strange circumstances under which the games are held may place unexpected pressure on some athletes. On Tuesday, superstar gymnast Simone Biles dropped out of the women's team event, telling teammates and reporters she wasn't in the right “headspace” to compete. “It's been really stressful this Olympic Games. There are a lot of different variables going into it,” Biles told the Washington Post.

The 2020 Summer Olympics bears similarities and differences to other major sporting events without viewers. The English Premier League supplemented (增加) game broadcasts with crowd noise from the soccer video game FIFA 20, mixed with game audio in real time. A Taiwanese baseball team and German soccer team began populating stands with cardboard cutouts of fans, and the trend caught on internationally.

Jamey Houle, the lead sports psychologist for Ohio State University Athletics and a former Al-American gymnast, says competitive athletes are trained in visualization— imagining performing a certain action or motion, such as doing a roundoff back handspring in gymnastics. Without moving a muscle, players using visualization can solidify neural (神经的) connections and activate their motor cortex (皮层). To visualize most effectively, Houle says, athletes working with sports psychologists will try to simulate as closely as possible the conditions of actual gameplay. Empty stadiums may thus have a measurable impact on players' performance. This phenomenon is grounded in a psychological concept called “social facilitation”, referring to a change in a person's performance that occurs when others are around compared to when a person is alone.

2023 Illustration Competition

Enter the competition most respected and admired in the industry for creativity in illustration, the Communication Arts Illustration Competition. Selected by distinguished professionals, the winning entries will be distributed worldwide in the Communication Arts Illustration Annual and on commarts. com, ensuring important exposure of the creations. Each winner will receive a professionalized Award of Excellence; made from solid aluminum, and an award certificate. Communication Art’s Award of Excellence is one of the most desired awards. If chosen, winning places you in the highest ranks of your profession.

Any illustration first published or produced from Jan. 2022 to Jan. 2023 is qualified. Entries may originate from any country. Descriptions in English are necessary for the judges to read.

Digital Images: RGB images in JPG format with a maximum file size of 2 MB. GIF images maybe livelier, but would be turned down, and so would the PNG ones.

Motion Entries: In MOV, MP4 or MPG format, with a maximum file size of 500 MB.

For more categories, please download the category PDF.

Entries must be registered no later than Jan. 13, 2023. Entries registered after that date will be charged a fee of $10 each. No entries can be registered after Jan, 27, 2023.