FONTAINE Chapman is hoping her illness is behind her as she looks to bounce back from a disappointing World Championships and build towards the new National Badminton League season.
The Birmingham Lions star had a busy summer in 2015 which all built towards the trip to Indonesia for the World Championships in August.
Unfortunately it did not go to plan for Chapman or the majority of the English team with illness hampering performances in the Far East.
For Chapman disappointment came in the first round where she was beaten by America’s Iris Wang, but she says she is eager to bounce back ahead of a big year building up to next summer’s Olympic Games.
“This summer has been quite busy, I have had quite a lot of things going on with tournaments and training camps, the big thing for me was the World Championships in Indonesia,” she said.
“Unfortunately I got quite ill from it as did a few of the other players so it has been quite a long road back to recovery from that so I am looking forward to getting back into training again and competing for the rest of the season.
“They think we might have got a parasite, I think there was quite a lot of players from different countries as well that got infected by it, it was not just the English team we had all had our antibiotics so we are on the way back up now.”
“Because of my illness I am taking it week by week to make sure I do not get any worse and obviously having such a big chunk of time off to my body recover you can pick up niggles.
“It is just making sure I progressively increase my training and get back to normal as quick as possible but without getting any injuries.
“Personally for me this season is just to try and maintain my fitness, I think with a lot of players here we do tend to pick up niggles as does everybody else so it is to maintain that and make sure that I stay injury free.”
Fellow Coventry badminton star Sam Parsons is also hoping to enjoy a successful season in the NBL as players up their game in the hope of making the GB squad for Rio 2016.
Parsons will again line up in the colours of Milton Keynes Badminton after playing for the team in last year’s inaugural NBL.
The 20-year-old is steadily carving out a name for himself in the sport and currently holds the tag of England national champion.
And Parsons admits the standard of badminton on court in the run up to next year’s Olympic Games is driving him on.
“I’m currently ranked at 165 which is the highest I’ve been, so that’s an achievement in itself, but I’ve got points to defend from certain competitions.
“I don’t want to drop in the rankings, because that means I’ll have to go through qualifying next season, so if I can just maintain it that would be great.
“This year I’m really about finding the little areas that I can improve on, and not worrying so much about results, but more about the performance, especially in an Olympic year.
“You can definitely feel the intensity change in an Olympic qualification year. You can see the difference in how some players play, because they know if they don’t do everything right, they could miss out on the chance to participate in badminton’s biggest tournament.”
