Mark Burgess becomes GB Badminton chair

As a former world number 35 in men’s singles, Mark Burgess knows a thing or two about high performance badminton.

After an accomplished career on court and widespread experience in sports administration, Burgess joins GB Badminton as Chair to lead the growth and success of the elite end of the sport in Great Britain.

“It is a tremendous honour to be entrusted with the pinnacle of our sport and trying to produce Olympic and Paralympic medals,” says Burgess.

“They are the four-yearly events where badminton is on the global stage and in everyone’s homes, so trying to support, add value and challenge in that area is a really exciting prospect.”

Based in Epsom, Surrey with two daughters, Burgess played badminton full-time for five years after graduating and rose to a high ranking before going into coaching.

His administrative career began in grassroots sport in West London and saw him become Regional Director for Swim England.

Burgess has spent the last eight years working in university sport as Head of Sport at Brunel University and latterly as Head of Sport and Wellness at King’s College London, overseeing everything from the delivery of physical activity right through to elite sports performance.

“I always try to highlight what sport can give people in a wider sense,” said Burgess. “Sport gives you such good life skills in terms of planning, thinking ahead and enhancing performance.

“These are wider skills that serve you well in work and life, giving you an ability to be self-critical, and for me all of that has flowed from the badminton court.”

GB Badminton is responsible for the World Class Performance Programme (WCPP) in Paralympic and Olympic Badminton, where players from Badminton England, Badminton Scotland, Badminton Wales and Ulster Badminton come together to compete as Team GB.

Burgess places a strong emphasis on collaboration between these four bodies as being the key to success.

“I would love to see how I can support and bring people along so we can share best practice,” said Burgess.

“For instance, is there something that’s going really well in Scotland that England could improve on, or vice versa?

“It’s about how we can support those home nations to come into an environment where they want to collaborate, they want to work together.”

Burgess envisages the priorities for the Olympic and Paralympic programmes as being totally distinct.

“From an Olympic perspective, it is very much one of building and trying to bring young talent through,” said Burgess. “We’ve got a history of bringing players through to a good level and it is an incredibly competitive global environment of competition.

“We have a lot of really good young talent and some of those established players will be going through to the Los Angeles Olympics.

“From a Paralympic perspective, we are performing at a world-class level already and the challenge there is much more about thinking longer term.

“We have quite a small pool of players performing at an incredibly high level, so we want to work with the Home Nations to continue to have a supply chain of talent.”

Burgess will work closely with UK Sport in the role and expresses total alignment with the British high performance system’s aim of ‘winning well’.

“We have to create a positive environment for our players,” he said. “If players are not feeling supported and cared for, it’s going to inhibit their performance. We want to win, but we want to so with a happy and aspirational group of athletes.”

Burgess will be replacing Stephen Baddeley in the role. Baddeley was one of England’s most successful men’s singles players, winning European and Commonwealth titles while gaining 143 caps for his country.

He later became Director of Coaching and Development for Badminton Scotland before joining Badminton England in 1996, initially as its Performance Director, followed by 7 years as its CEO. In 2004, he moved to Sport England as its Director of Sport which included a 14-month term as its interim Chief Executive.

He is currently Director of Sport at the University of Bath and he has been Chair of the GB Board since November 2016.

Sue Storey, CEO at Badminton England, said: “On behalf of everyone at Badminton England, I would like to take this opportunity to place on record my sincere thanks to Stephen Baddeley for all the great work he did in his role as Chair of GB Badminton. And I am extremely excited to support Mark Burgess as his successor.

“Mark is an individual with a wealth of knowledge of our sport, its wider community and exactly what it takes to become an elite athlete in badminton and we are looking forward to working closely with GB Badminton to grow our sport, inspire more people to engage with badminton and develop the next generation of Olympic and Paralympic stars.”