Badminton World Isn't Smiling for These Birdies

Badminton fanatic Dan Chien began noticing a change in his shuttlecocks a few months ago.

The feathers seemed thinner and his shuttlecocks were falling apart at an alarming rate.

"Everybody complains now, 'What's wrong with the shuttle?' " he said one morning as he anticipated an evening full of hard-hitting matches at the San Gabriel Valley Badminton Club in El Monte.

Chien knows why. After a practice session, he groused: "It was goose feather, but now it feels almost like duck."

Bird flu has killed 134 people around the world, sickened hundreds more and forced the culling of millions of poultry from Vietnam to Nigeria.

Now it is smashing the world of badminton.

The heart of the game is the shuttlecock, the best of which are made of goose feathers plucked in northern China.

Those geese have been slaughtered by the millions to contain the virus, causing a feather shortage that has unnerved the badminton world.

"I believe the problem is potentially considerable," said Torsten Berg, the official bird flu spokesman for the International Badminton Federation.

The shortage has been particularly felt in Southern California, home to some of the country's best players, coaches and clubs.

Prices on premium shuttlecocks, which cost up to $25 for a tube of a dozen, have risen 25% in the last few months.

Manufacturers are competing for the limited feathers, and players are scrambling to buy the best birdies in bulk, further restricting supply.

Die-hard players are bracing for the worst.

As the virus has spread from Asia to Africa and beyond, scientists have grown increasingly concerned that it could mutate into a form easily transmitted among humans, leading to a pandemic that could kill millions.

Ahmad Bakar, 54, managing director of Pacific Sports Private Ltd., which sells shuttlecocks under the Ashaway brand, acknowledged that a pandemic would be a disaster.

But he can't help expressing a more personal concern.

"If bird flu becomes pandemic," he sighed, "shuttlecock prices could become twofold or threefold higher."

The premium shuttlecocks prized by Chien and other serious players have little in common with the cheap plastic variety strewn across American lawns. The birdies, as some call them, must be tough enough to endure smashes that can send them whizzing at up to 150 mph and shaped just right so their arcing flight is predictable and consistent.