Commonwealth Games: Marcus Ellis continues to strive for on-court perfection

When he felt that his chances of repeating or even building on his remarkable bronze medal from Rio were being damaged by a hostile environment in Badminton England in the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics, he spoke out.

He and his bronze-medal winning partner and fellow Commonwealth Games champion Chris Langridge were not happy.

They were overlooked for men’s doubles selection for the Games and then when he returned from Tokyo, Ellis, his girlfriend and mixed doubles partner Lauren Smith and fellow player Chloe Birch found themselves cut off from national team coaching as the fallout from the pre-Olympic rift deepened.

“As I’ve got older and more experienced my tolerance to average has gone down,” Ellis tells The Yorkshire Post about his motivation for speaking out and jeopardising his future in a programme that he had been involved with all his adult life.

“I expect the best from myself and I expect the best from the people I’m training with and the people who are coaching me; we should be striving for excellence every day.

“That’s the environment we should be living in. When I was younger I’d probably have buried my head in the sand a little bit and carried on working hard, but now I’m at a point where if I see something that’s not right I will say it, not necessarily the way it’s been put out the last year but if I see something I don’t like I will say it straight away and that’s a good way to be because you’re moving forward together and you’re more likely to come to a solution.”

As awkward as the months prior to Tokyo and up to the new year were for Ellis as he trained alone in the national badminton centre in Milton Keynes, it did at least prove a watershed moment.

Something needed to be said, in his view. Dirty laundry needed to be aired.

“Everything I said I absolutely meant,” says Ellis, who went as far to say publically his preparations for Tokyo had been ‘garbage’.

“I wanted to change the culture not just for me but for the guys who are teenagers and might have a 10-, 15-year career ahead of them, I want them to feel excited about coming here and making a life for themselves in this sport.

“I didn’t want it to become a place where people didn’t want to come.”

And he is glad he acted, especially now the healing process has begun.

“A mediation process started at the beginning of 2022,” he says. “There were a lot of difficult conversations and meetings, and since then there has been quite a lot of changes in personnel, a lot of change and it’s been very, very hard, not just for me and the other players but the other coaches here.

“There were a lot of stand-offs going on, no one really knew what each other was thinking. I’m under no illusions that the staff took a real battering from a lot of media outlets and I don’t think we understood just how hurt personally they fely by it.

“It was good to sit down and fully understand their side, and they could fully understand our side, instead of it becoming a shouting match.

“A month into the new year we moved back in, it was a slow process and we’re in a place where we can work with each coach.

“We are in a very good place, we were very lucky to have someone from UK Sport come in and they put us on the right track, and the relationship between all the players and the coaches now is a very positive one.

“Don’t get me wrong there’s still work to be done, absolutely. It’s not perfect, it probably never will be, but you’ve got to really strive for it.

“Having some new people come in, everyone gets new ideas, fresh opinions, it’s good for the environment.

“People are excited to come into the building whether it’s to coach or for the players to train.

“There’s a buzz about the place again which was missing before.”

Which brings us up to speed with where Ellis is now, set to represent Team England at a Commonwealth Games for a second time in Birmingham next week.

“It still feels special, I’m still excited by it,” says Ellis, who built on his Rio bronze by winning a medal of every colour on the Gold Coast in 2018.

“Coming away with a bronze, silver and a gold is something I’m exceptionally proud of. But the critic in me says I should have come away with three golds, that’s just the way I’m wired.”

Ellis no longer plays men’s doubles – Langridge quit after the Tokyo snub and at 31 last summer Ellis had no desire to find a new partner.

He will contest the team event in Birmingham and the mixed doubles with Smith.

“As with all sports the highs are incredibly high and the lows are incredibly low, you’re on this massive rollercoaster all the time,” says Ellis of the dynamic of his relationship with his playing and life partner.

“It takes a reality check, even in the worst times we are both aiming for the exact same thing and in general if something happens in badminton, whether that’s a positive or a negative, we’re very good at leaving it at the door when we go home, and that’s really important.

“The last thing we’d want is for our home life to be negatively impacted by anything that was going on in badminton.”

They were defeated in the quarter-finals in Tokyo, a moment that proved an instant motivator for the Paris Olympics.

“We were on the bus heading back to the village saying we need to carry on, that’s not how we want to finish,” says Ellis.

“Sport can be filled with huge drama, everything can change, but that’s why we play, we don’t want boring. After Paris we’ll assess again, but I won’t be committing one way or another at this time.”

Boring would never be a label to attach to the career of Ellis, for whom that unlikely bronze in Rio six years ago remains the crowning moment.

Badminton is all he has known for a long time, hence the desire for perfection.

He has been playing the sport since the age of six when his Dad took him to a social night at Colne Valley Leisure Centre in Huddersfield.

“I was running about on court, hitting it, but they entertained me,” he says.

“I’ve been a pain in the bum ever since.”