Yang Wei (badminton)

Yang Wei (simplified Chinese: 杨维; traditional Chinese: 楊維; pinyin: Yáng Wéi; Cantonese Yale: Yeung Wai; born January 13, 1979 in Hubei, China) is a female badminton player from the People's Republic of China. Yang grew up in Guangdong.

A woman's doubles specialist, Yang has won some forty international titles, most of them in the sport's top tier events, since 1998. Prior to 2003 she partnered Huang Nanyan with whom she earned a silver medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and gained the winning point against South Korea in the 2002 Uber Cup (women's world team championship) final. Her subsequent partnership with Zhang Jiewen has been even more successful as they have shared international domination with compatriot rivals Gao Ling and Huang Sui. Yang and Zhang captured gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics by defeating Gao and Huang in the final. They bested the same team in winning both the 2005 and 2007 BWF World Championships. On the other hand, Gao and Huang have been an obstacle for them at the prestigious All-England Championships, defeating Yang and Zhang in the 2003, 2004, and 2006 finals. Curiously, this is the one major tournament that neither Yang nor Zhang has ever won.

In 2008 Yang helped China to secure its sixth consecutive Uber Cup title and won women's doubles at the Swiss, Thailand, and Malaysia Opens with Zhang Jiewen. At the Beijing Olympics where they were first seeded, however, Yang and Zhang were upset in the quarterfinals by Japan's Miyuki Maeda and Satoko Suetsuna. The event was eventually won by a younger Chinese pair, Du Jing and Yu Yang, perhaps signaling a changing of the guard in the Chinese dynasty.