Objective: Epidemiological studies examined injuries in European and Asian badminton players but no study directly compared these 2 populations. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine whether differences existed between French and Chinese regular badminton players (RBP) in terms of injury. Methods: An online questionnaire was completed by 113 French and 117 Chinese RBP. The two populations were matched for distribution of genders, ages, skill levels and badminton exposure. Chi-square tests (X2) were conducted to determine differences in injuries distribution between the two populations. Results: A higher percentage of French RBP reported to have experienced at least one injury over the 5 past years compared with Chinese RBP (66% vs. 45%, respectively, X2 = 10.3, P = 0.001). For the upper limb, French players experienced more shoulder/arm injuries (59% vs. 32%, respectively, P < 0.001) whereas Chinese reported more wrist/hand injuries (44% vs. 12%, respectively, P = 0.049), suggesting differences in the employed playing techniques to perform the variety of badminton strokes. The vast majority of injuries were localized to the lower extremity both for French and Chinese (69% and 56%, respectively), with a higher prevalence for the ankle (33% and 49%, respectively), then the knee (19% and 27%, respectively). Conclusions: The most common injury reported was the ankle sprain, which generally occurred during a jump landing upon backward and lateral movements (60%) or during forward lunge (26%). As more than half of the ankle sprains were moderate or severe, a particular attention should be paid to the effects of footwear and court surface characteristics on the biomechanics of badminton players.
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