Eight Top Olympic Badminton Players Disqualified In Match Fixing Scandal

August 1, 2012 | Filed under Sports | Posted by

In parts of the world badminton is a big deal, so the news from London this morning is kind of shocking.

LONDON, Aug 1 (Reuters) – Eight women badminton players were disqualified by the sport’s federation on Wednesday for deliberately trying to lose at the Olympics and manipulate the draw, angering fans and fellow athletes who said they undermined the spirit of the Games.

They were disqualified following a formal disciplinary hearing by the Badminton World Federation, but were not expelled from the Games. It was not clear what that meant for their future participation in London.

..In last night’s [matches] at Wembley Arena in London the crowd shouted abuse at the players as badminton matches descended into farce when the teams deliberately sprayed shots and duffed serves.

The players involved were China’s world champions Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang, Indonesia’s Greysia Polii and Meiliana Jauhari and two South Korean pairs – Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na, and Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung.

Men’s singles champion Lin Dan broke ranks with his badminton compatriots, saying such tactics were not in the Olympic spirit.

One observer noted that the matches featuring the top seeded teams looked like “drunken picnic badminton,” they were so bad.

Some of the disqualified players and teams have essentially blamed the format for their actions – saying they were trying to trying to set themselves up for the knockout rounds to avoid having to play strong competition in the early rounds.

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Posted by on August 1, 2012.
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Doug Johnson is a news junkie and long time blog reader, turned author.

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  • jim_m

    saying they were trying to trying to set themselves up for the knockout
    rounds to avoid having to play strong competition in the early rounds.

    Seems to me that if you are good enough to win the Gold Medal you are good enough to beat anyone you will have to play. They deserved to be DQ’d.

    • Cecil Bordages

      Yep.

  • Conservachef

    That is the danger in group play- the chance to wind up with games like this. Ping-pong, err, table tennis, dropped group play in 2000 to avoid this. It encourages you to play for the best seeding instead of winning outright.

    But blaming the format for that is only a small part of the problem. The players should compete to win, against the best competition. They made the decision to go out and lose the game- they earned their DQ.

    Interestingly, the China team already has allegations about game-fixing against it.

  • Hank_M

    I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming.

    Badminton as an Olympic event?

    And to top it off, there’s a scandal with it??

  • retired.military

    Since when did badminton become a sport? Geez. What is next Tindly winks?

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