Eight Women Disqualified from badminton for trying to lose
Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2012 5:32 pmThe Guardian wrote:Eight badminton players at the London 2012 Olympic Games have been charged with trying to throw their matches after a spectacle during which spectators booed teams for apparently deliberate errors.
The Badminton World Federation said it had charged four pairs of female Olympic doubles players with not using their best efforts to win a match. They are a Chinese team, two teams from South Korea and one team from Indonesia.
There were extraordinary scenes on Tuesday at a match between China and South Korea when the players repeated hit shots wide or served into the net and were warned on-court by the referee as a consequence.
Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, the Chinese top seeds, and their South Korean rivals Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na were booed by spectators.
The Korean pair won the match 21-14 21-11. The longest rally in the first game was four strokes.
Later, another Korean pair were playing against an Indonesian side when the same referee, Thorsten Berg, threatened the players with disqualification because of their behaviour. In that game Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung were up against the Indonesian pairing of Meiliana Juahari and Greysia Polii.
The Koreans eventually won by two sets to one.
All sides had already qualified for the next round and the farcical scenes appeared to be an attempt by teams to manipulate which team they will have to face.
Yu defended her performance after the match, saying she wanted to ease up ahead of the knockout phase. "Actually, these opponents really were strong. This is the first time we've played them and tomorrow it's the knockout rounds, so we've already qualified and we wanted to have more energy for the knockout rounds.
"Really, it's not necessary to go out hard again when the knockout rounds are tomorrow."
Paisan Rangsikitpho, a member of the Badminton World Federation's technical committee, said after the controversial matches that the governing body was aware of what had happened. "We will have a real discussion tonight to see what has happened, but I have to get all the facts."
Petya Nedelcheva, the Bulgarian women's singles 15th seed, who was playing on an adjacent court at the time of the first incident, was forthright in her general criticism of China. "China control everything," she said. "I don't know who controlled the match to lose but if it is China again, they did it so many times last year, they didn't play against each other in 20 matches. They do what they want."
Nedelcheva's comments are supported by figures compiled by online magazine Badzine earlier this year showing that of the 99 all-Chinese matches played in major tournaments in 2011, 20 were walkovers.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/au ... arged-lose
I find it a real shame that people feel the need to try and lose in a match when they know they're going through to the finals. There are plenty of other people in their countries who would have loved to compete for their country and do their best. Four other teams have been called back to compete in these teams' places. Thoughts?
