[Video] Vietnam Is World Shuttlecock Champion 8 Times In A Row

It's official: Vietnam is the best in the world at kicking shuttlecocks.

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Last weekend, the Vietnamese national team took the top prize at the 8th World Shuttlecock Championships, earning an impressive array of hardware that included four gold and three silver medals.

According to Vietnam Plus, the team beat out 11 other countries including China, Poland, France and Germany. While this alone is a win for Vietnam, it's all the more remarkable that the country remains undefeated in the sport, having won all eight editions of the tournament held thus far.

These days, you can hardly walk through a local park without spotting a game of shuttlecock, but the sport has been around much longer than you might expect. According to the International Shuttlecock Federation, there is historical evidence of kickball games in Vietnam as early as the 11th century. In some of the country's 17th-century temples, wood carvings of shuttlecock players also exist, suggesting that this has been a national pasttime for centuries.

During the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the sport fell out of fashion, however it was revived in 1975 by a Hanoian doctor, leading to the widespread popularity of the sport and the success of Vietnam's shuttlecock players on the world stage.