Olympic Badminton Player Overcame 'Bad Boy' Years to Lead U.S. Team

This Saturday, Olympic badminton players will begin their quest for gold. The Americans are the underdogs in Olympic badminton. And one of those underdogs had to overcome some tough teenage years to get there. KPCC's Susan Valot has more.

Susan Valot: During the recent U.S. Open of Badminton, the Orange County Badminton Club in Orange was a hum of activity. Craftsmen sat in one corner, stringing new rackets. A mostly Asian crowd filled the stands. A symphony of whacks and grunts filled the courts as white shuttlecocks flew back and forth like mini-missiles.

Howard Bach of Orange took a rest on the sidelines after he finished his matches. The 5'7" badminton Olympian is practically all muscle. And he doesn't like it when people call badminton as a "backyard sport."

Howard Bach: It's not a sissy sport. And if you want me to show you, I will. 'Cause it's 207 miles an hour, and we're serious.

Valot: And Bach's serious. But it hasn't always been that way. He's overcome a lot to get to Beijing, his second Olympic stint. Bach was born in Vietnam 29 years ago. He came to San Francisco with his family when he was a toddler. When he was about five, his dad put a badminton racket in his hand. Three years later, he played in his first official game and lost – well, came in second.

Bach: I cried. And that kind of gave me the initial spark to, hey, want to improve and be better and excel in what I want to do.

Valot: Chris Young was Bach's partner in those early matches.

Chris Young: He was a– he still is a fighter. He never wanted to lose. Yeah, I remember playing with him in doubles and winning a tournament, and he was so intent on winning. He didn't want to, he didn't want to lose.

Valot: Young, who was an adult when Bach was a kid, says Bach sometimes seemed like he didn't want to be at practice, but...

Young: He was very, very competitive. And because of his size, because of his size, being short, he would always, you know, try much harder than, from what I could tell, the other kids.

Valot: But when Bach hit his teenage years, he started hanging with the wrong crowd – the type of wrong that got one of his friends shot and killed by a gang member. Bach tossed aside badminton like a broken racket, and picked up a brief career as a petty thief.

Bach: You know, I was tampering with the meter. You know how you have to feed the meter when you park? I was, you know, getting newspapers for free in different ways. I knew how to open the newspaper rack and all that.

I knew how to make phone calls with paper clips and stuff, and back then we didn't have a cell phone, so if you can call like, New York, that was a big thing. Just, I don't know, the list goes on and on. And just dumb things, you know?

Valot: Badminton had just become an Olympic sport at the 1992 Barcelona games. Bach's family pushed him to get back into it. He figured, "What the heck?" He applied to the Olympic training center... and made it.

Bach: It taught me a lot because, you know, it changed my life around. It's just taught me about hard work. I mean, just being around the environment with a bunch of athletes who all have one goal: to make the Olympics.

Valot: Bach and his partner made it past several rounds in men's doubles at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The next year, they won the world title – the first U.S. men's doubles pair to do that.

[Sound of court announcement at U.S. Open of badminton]

Valot: This time, Bach's going to Beijing as an Olympic veteran. Eva Lee, a graduate of Orange County's Villa Park High School, is Bach's Olympic partner in mixed doubles.

Eva Lee: He's really confident in his own abilities, which is really good. That makes him, like, a really good player. It's like, he's like, yeah, it's like, doesn't matter. Like, no matter what I can do. It's like, really positive, really confident. I think I really admire that about him.

Valot: Fellow Olympic badminton teammate Mesinee "May" Mangkalakiri of Garden Grove says Bach's the "big brother" of the team, especially since he's the oldest.

Mesinee Mangkalakiri: I think he sets a good example for everyone. He's just, he's someone that if I have trouble when I'm playing, or if I'm feeling down, or he's just always someone I can go to and talk to. And he, through experience and just being there, he knows what to say to make me feel better.

[Badminton line referee yelling "Out!"]

Valot: Howard Bach chalks it up to experience, on the court and off.

Bach: Having the bad boy background definitely put everything in perspective. I kind of know where I came from and where I can be, playing the sport versus, you know, being out in the streets. So, you know, it put me in my place. And it reassured my– that my sacrifices for the sport is not, you know, been in vain.

Valot: The U.S. has never won an Olympic medal in badminton. But Bach and the rest of this year's team hope to change that.