Stefan Ljutzkanov

Stefan has a passion for sport, entrepreneurship and technology. He believes in dual careers for athletes and coaches, and part of his research has been in this direction. He is a Lead-researcher in variety of projects related to Badminton and Sports and a Visiting Fellow in high performance coaching, technology and entrepreneurship at Loughborough University.

Stefan started playing badminton in Bulgaria, Veliko Tarnovo. At 13, he got his first national medal, later becoming a national champion in doubles and mixed doubles (U19) and 2nd in singles (U19) and 2nd in doubles at senior men's level. He has been a Balkan champion in singles, in doubles (with Vladimir Metodiev) and in mixed doubles (with Petya Nedelcheva).

He started coaching at 16 with his first group of young, aspiring athletes. He soon discovered that his passion for coaching was much stronger than his passion for personal badminton success as a player. He had the opportunity to start the first professional club in Bulgaria in 2001, going on to win the national team championships and many more international titles across Europe.

During his journey, he met many great international coaches, which helped his decision to move to Denmark to pursue the highest international coaching level. He coached in various clubs including Saeby and VBK junior club, where he met coaches such as Morten Bjergen and Thomas Engholm. His coaching journey continued in Hojberg (Aarhus areas), where he started an international badminton development academy.

Subsequently, he became a sporting director at the ESG Badminton Club (at the time, the 5th biggest club in Denmark), where he successfully developed the senior teams to higher levels of success. He was later invited to become the head coach for the Junior National Centre in Hamburg, Germany, responsible for elite junior players and the U15 national selection.

Stefan took the challenge to develop the national centre in Kaiserslautern, Germany, which had lost national certification. It took two years to build it back, attracting talent and creating a capable coaching team. Here, he introduced concepts that would later evolve into Badmintoo, recognizing the influence of Morten Bjergen, to whom Badmintoo has dedicated 10% of profits for a scholarship named after him.

Realizing that changing the status quo in badminton development was a bigger task than previously perceived, Stefan chose to seek support at Loughborough University. Thanks to Jacob Hoi, he was introduced to Prof. Mark King, leading to his joining the University as a PhD research student and the birth of Badmintoo.com with some of the world's best academics, coaches and researchers.