“Looks like we made it, look how far we’ve come….” goes the Shania Twain song. Doubles badminton puts pairings through a complete wringer, but newly crowned mixed doubles champion, Malaysian Toh Ee Wei and Tang Jie Chen battled more than the usual clashes as a combo, before they won the World Championship at Paris on Sunday.
Their hair dyed uniformly snowy, and on Malaysia’s independence ‘Merdeka’ day, the amazing pairing that made finals at Swiss and Thailand this year, beat the former World no 1 Chinese to emulate their coach Nova Widianto.
The happiest person after their 21-15, 21-14 win over Chinese formidable Jiang Zhen Bang and Wei Ya Xin, would be Toh Ee’s mother who would watch her struggle to breathe in hospital for three months, and break down. Fighting back bone TB, Toh Ee has now resiliently gone the distance and achieved her dream to become World Champion, Malaysia’s second in last three years.
It was in France in fact, at Orleans Masters 2023, the start of the summer, that Chen-Toh won the smallish title at a jolly, noisy tournament that mirrored their personality. Having worked hard on their game, and getting past rumours of a splitting amplified on social media, with Malaysia’s obsessive attention like a K-Drama, on their partnership, the duo have prevailed, and ended China’s stranglehold on the mixed title.
But in 2023, life had been decidedly downbeat. Then 22, Toh had suffered from bone tuberculosis in the year past. She was back on the badminton court 12 months later, but raw from treatment and rehab and training, very mellowed as opposed to the livewire she was. But Tang Jie Chen, quite a star in the making, had been supportive, as the pair slowly made their way to Top 20 in mixed doubles. A call-up to Malaysia’s Sudirman Cup squad followed, as Toh Ee offered immense inspiration after overcoming some very dire diagnoses and returning to win on court at Orleans.
Speaking to The Indian Express back then, Toh Ee had described Bone TB as very painful. ‘Very suffer’, narrating how popping painkillers was unavoidable when she struggled with the ailment. Her mother wept, watching her suffer in hospital, breaking her heart. She had spent the 2023 summer picking points from small tournaments in Europe. “Every loss keeps me focussed on what to do next,” she would say, finding a semblance of sense to how her badminton love was fettered and then released into the wild for her to shine. In an Insta post, she penned what she had gone through.
Playing with Bone TB
Diagnosed with Bone TB at 21, it had been persistently acute sinus issues (chronic sinusitis) prior to that in February of 2019, finding the cause of which that had led to this being figured. Toh Ee had been a junior World Championship silver medallist back in 2018 alongside Pearly Tan – and it’s a brilliant occasion that both are in respective finals, with mixed winning gold ushering in Malaysia’s doubles resurgence after beloved coaches Nova Widianto and Rexy Mainaky had taken over.
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She underwent a surgery for sinus-related issues at 18, her juniors career stop-start. “It’s been there all the time,” she had told Express back in 2023, adding, “I couldn’t breathe properly. The nose would be blocked, and it would be very hard.” The Bone TB was a punch in the gut, but also smothered a very bubbly, dynamic and lively personality like Ee Wei.
Toh Ee had started badminton at age 7, playing in the house, in Malacca. Her father would watch her getting immersed in the sport and pack her off to a local coaching centre. After a week of training, the sessions would increase. There’s a Youtube clip of Ee Wei’s, where she dives in front from the midcourt to send back the shuttle, and then next instant, tumbles back to sit on the court floor, and still manages to return from that hugely unbalanced position. There’s another where she misses a forehand tap completely like a racquethead gasping at air, but then drops the racquet and connects a backhand with the dipping shuttle below net level.
Ee Wei simply loved badminton and was mightily good at it too. Koo Kien Keat, former doubles great from Malaysia, called Ee Wei a ‘daring player’. For you wouldn’t know if you watched her only on court, just how debilitating her situation had been, just months ago. Malaysia was watching with wonder.
“I started to train a month after hospital treatment. No muscle, no energy, no strength for 3 months,” she would explain. Doubles training is especially bubbly with squeals and guffaws, but Toh Ee would lock herself in the gym in a tranquil tedium, knowing she lacked power. What others took for granted – the speed, the strength, the breathing, the stamina – she would need to slowly build.
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Making Medeka Day memorable
Nova Widianto and Rexy Mainaky would urge her to take it slow and not rush. ‘Slowly. Slowly, slowly’ she recalls the strength returning for her to play her delectable and delightful strokes the way she liked playing them. The coaches knew her struggle, her federation rallied around her and they wanted her back to being her spry self, she recalled.
A fan of the legendary Indonesian Lilyana Natsir, Ee Wei would be paired with Tang Jie Chen, a power player, around the same time as when Nova and Rexy joined hands for Malaysian doubles – in December of 2022. But Orleans was wondering without much on court training. She would be trundling away in the gym, with not many on-court sessions together with her partner. She fought through that post-rehab conditioning soreness of muscles, every day, and worked with Malaysian S&C magician Nick Hedayatpour, who is called the ‘strength artist at Kuala Lumpur.’
Subsequent seasons would test the pairing and their bond searingly. But they stuck it out, and made Merdeka day memorable for Malaysians.
