Ben Lane hailed last weekend’s victory at the Hylo Open as a fitting end to his best season yet with partner Sean Vendy.
Lane and Vendy’s men’s doubles triumph in Saarbrucken earned them a second Super 300 trophy of 2024 and continued their impressive form after runs to the Arctic Open and Denmark Open quarter-finals.
The top seeds had to come from behind to beat second seeds Rasmus Kjaer and Frederik Sogaard in the final, a particularly pleasing way to seal their success after the efforts they have put in off-court.
“We’ve done a lot of work over the last four years on the mental side of the game and how to act when we’re losing and when the momentum is against us,” he said.
“We have really improved in that area and that tournament showed that. We might not be playing our best but even when we’re not, we can fight, put the work in and still win.
“It has been a great season for us, probably our best so far.
“We’ve won two Super 300 titles and we’re happy with that but next year we want to go and stand on top of the podiums at the biggest competitions in the world – one of them being the All England, that is a massive goal for us. We just want to keep improving.”
Lane will spend the remainder of 2024 in a training block while Vendy is soon to welcome his first child with partner Shannon.
The pair have had an action-packed year and Lane has had time to reflect on their performance in Paris, when they were knocked out in the Olympic group stages after being beaten by two pairs who went on to win medals.
“I don’t want to say it was a disappointing Olympics, we thought we played pretty well, we just didn’t get the results we wanted,” he added.
“We knew it was an extremely tough group and we had chances in both the matches we lost. On the day, it didn’t come together.
“If things had gone slightly differently, we fully believe we could have been on the podium in Paris.
“We have shown in our results after the summer we are more than capable of doing it. We will go again in four years’ time and hopefully stand on the podium.
“We have both had a bit of time off since then – I hadn’t been home since last Christmas as the seasons are so intense now and there are so many tournaments.
“Then we went to Asia and we’ve had a really good end to the European tour, which was a nice way to finish the season off.”
Photo Credit:Yang Shaochen/Badminton Photo
