Olympic Badminton Players banned for throwing matches

[Renew Deal]

LONDON -- Eight female badminton doubles players were disqualified Wednesday from the London Olympics after trying to lose matches to receive a more favorable place in the tournament.

The Badminton World Federation announced its ruling after investigating two teams from South Korea and one each from China and Indonesia. It punished them for "not using one's best efforts to win a match" and "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport" in matches Tuesday night.

Erick Thohir, the head of Indonesia's Olympic team, told The Associated Press that the Indonesian team will appeal. The BWF said South Korea had also appealed.

The competition was to continue later Wednesday. It was unclear if four eliminated teams would be placed into the quarterfinals or if the competition would restart at the semifinal stage.
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The Chinese players were accused of leading the way by deliberately losing a game. This led to other teams behaving in a similar way to try to force an easier quarterfinal. At one stage, both teams appeared to be trying to lose.
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http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/badminton/story/_/id/8221408/2012-london-olympics-eight-badminton-players-disqualified-trying-throw-matches

[VWolf]

1. Sounds like the format of the tournament could use some re-tooling as well.

Soccer had this problem in the past. In a world cup match, Germany and Austria conspired to a 0-0 draw because it guaranteed both teams would advance. I don't believe either team had a single attempt on goal. Since then, Fifa has mandated that the final group matches be played simultaneously. This essentially eliminated the problem.

[Dr. Strange]

4. The 1982 World Cup

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germany_1%E2%80%930_Austria_%281982_FIFA_World_Cup%29

There's really no excuse for the BWF here--they set things up in such a way that the players benefited from losing. They should have put more thought into this maybe BEFORE the Olympics.

[VWolf]

6. Thanks for the link n/t

[joeybee12]

2. I'm willing to bet this has been done in the past...

But only on the Olympic stage are people watching and seeing it done.

That said, keep the bums out.

[rocktivity]

3. If the way the matches are set up makes it possible to advance WITHOUT winning

then the problem is with the way the matches are set up, not the players.


rocktivity

[cherokeeprogressive]

5. I haven't really been following this story because I was at work but if

the setup is "double-elimination", isn't soccer's World Cup set up the same way?

[JonLP24]

7. They already qualified for the knockout stage

They were losing to gain a more favorable draw. The Chinese didn't want to play each other and when South Korea noticed what they were doing, they were losing in order to avoid playing the Chinese pair which were World Champions.