KUALA LUMPUR: BAM's Olympic shuttlers left this morning for their training base in Aire Sur La Lys, France, two hours away from Paris.
The players, Aaron Chia, Soh Wooi Yik, Pearly Tan, M. Thinaah, Chen Tang Jie and Toh Ee Wei, were accompanied by national coaching director Rexy Mainaky, men's doubles coach Tan Bin Shen, mixed doubles coach Nova Widianto and women's doubles coach Hoon Thien How.
They departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
They will be based in Aire Sur La Lys, a town in northern France, for 10 days before the Olympic badminton competition starts on July 27 at the Porte de la Chapelle Arena.
The camp will help the Malaysian players acclimatise to the weather in France ahead of the Olympic competition.
Aire Sur La Lys offers complete badminton and fitness facilities which will enable the Malaysian squad to train and recover from their sessions.
Men's pair Aaron-Wooi Yik, apart from men's singles Lee Zii Jia, have been earmarked as potential medallists in Paris.
Independent shuttler Zii Jia will leave for Paris on July 21.
The draw for the men's doubles, however, is yet to be conducted following French duo Lucas Corvee-Ronan Labar's successful appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS).
The pair had fallen short of qualifying after the Badminton World Federation (BWF) corrected its rankings in April following an error in points calculation last year, resulting in Corvee-Labar's CAS appeal.
But with IOC accepting the BWF's request to make an exception for them, Corvee-Labar will compete in the Olympic men's doubles, which usually features 16 pairs.
The tournament will now have three pools of four pairs and one pool of five pairs. It is unknown when the draw will be conducted.
Women's pair Pearly-Thinaah have been draw in Group A - dubbed the 'group of death' - containing world No. 1 Chen Qing Chen-Jia Yi Fan of China, world No. 6 Mayu Matsumoto-Wakana Nagahara of Japan and world No. 9 Apriyani Rahayu-Siti Fadia Silva Ramadhanti of Indonesia. Only the top two pairs from each group will advance to the knockout stage.