Scooping the BWF Para Badminton Pair of the Year Award in Bangkok last month has whetted the appetite of Thomas Wandschneider and Rick Cornell Hellmann for more, especially with the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games qualifying period starting this year.

The German WH1-WH2 men’s pair, who started their 2022 by lifting the Spanish Para Badminton International II in March, capped their fine year with the world title in Tokyo in November.

In doing so, Wandschneider became the oldest world Para badminton champion at 58.

The world No.2s also finished runners-up at three events – Spanish Para Badminton International, Bahrain Para Badminton International and 4 Nations Para Badminton International.

“We came together as a team so fast and so well,” Hellman, Wandschneider’s junior by 24 years, acknowledged in Thailand. “It’s beyond what our trainers expected and probably beyond what we expected but we worked incredibly hard for it.”

Having had a fairly productive year, Wandschneider and Hellman are now after bigger goals and more records.

To know how they feel about their award and what their next targets are, watch this: