CHN/KOR/INA WD pair disqualified from the Olympics

[suetyan]

Yup, right decision for players who don't appreciate sportsmanship. They got what they done, disqualified from Olympic Games.

before i went to sleep last night, the appealing process was still ongoing. This morning, I checked, the appeals filed by both teams had been declined. That's a wise decision made by them this time. I am wondering are the playera crying now.

[OneToughBirdie]

No, ZYL/TQ still capable of winning Gold here....................

Oh, definitely. With YY/WYL out, WD is wide open but ZYL/TQ has as good or better odds of winning. Only concern is ZYL playing XD and if she makes to both, how would she fare in the final, playing 2 matches same night?

I post before seeing the SF lineup...I say WZL/TQ mine gold, only the Jap pair to offer token resistance, and for Canada, we can possibly get a bronze, our 1st medal in baddy....go Canada go...these days with medals so hard to mine, every medal even copper or zinc counts....CAN Boleh

[OneToughBirdie]

No, ZYL/TQ still capable of winning Gold here....................

<BR><BR>

Oh, definitely. With YY/WYL out, WD is wide open but ZYL/TQ has as good or better odds of winning. Only concern is ZYL playing XD and if she makes to both, how would she fare in the final, playing 2 matches same night?

<BR><BR>I post before seeing the SF lineup...I say ZYL/TQ will mine gold, only the Jap pair to offer token resistance, and for Canada, we can possibly get a bronze, our 1st medal in baddy....go Canada go...these days with medals so hard to mine, every medal even copper or zinc counts....CAN Boleh

[bakulaw]

WD Finals and XD Finals are played in different nights. Lucky for ZYL!

[uniclone]

This is a say day for badminton... Top seeds who put on such great shows and worked so hard for this day all of the past 4 years were treated like dirt. Who are the ones who gave badminton fans something to cheer about? first time the top seeds had to do it themselves so as to avoid meeting before the finals. BWF is a joke. Whats is so wrong with the system these past 4 years? Asians dominating the sport? ....... Sad news, read that Yuyang might have decided to quite badminton for good.... Crushing a 4 year dream in such fashion is scandalous.... Moreover, these 8 are the ones with a right to call the gold medal theirs.

[limsy]

This is a say day for badminton... Top seeds who put on such great shows and worked so hard for this day all of the past 4 years were treated like dirt. Who are the ones who gave badminton fans something to cheer about? first time the top seeds had to do it themselves so as to avoid meeting before the finals. BWF is a joke. Whats is so wrong with the system these past 4 years? Asians dominating the sport? ....... Sad news, read that Yuyang might have decided to quite badminton for good.... Crushing a 4 year dream in such fashion is scandalous.... Moreover, these 8 are the ones with a right to call the gold medal theirs.

they worked so hard to serve into net and return into net whole matches?

[K_a_d_e]

I feel sorry for all of them they must be absolutely gothic, everyone have been working hard in the past 4 years they gave averything train hard, some injuries but in the end they have to walk away not because they've beaten by their opponents and is so sad, i blame BWF for this, they should noticed this in the first game between chinese and Koreans even before the game they shoul gathered everyone from WD department and warn them if they trying to lose they will be disqualified righ away that's Gail Emma said, they already warn bwf about this after QT/ZL lost to Padersen/Juhl, be we all know BWF is so lame

[fel8649]

the punishment is just great! it is really ashame to look at what they were doing during the match, ugly. feel ashame of your country. to the coach LYB, you and your team mate deserve this.

[uniclone]

they worked so hard to serve into net and return into net whole matches?

Please take a look at the rankings. All because of one match? Who in the 1st place will group the top 2 in such they might end up on the same side of the draw? This is ridiculous. Such great players being maginalised.....By using a point system, which rule states that you cant take it easy? This all started from BWF, why change now? Looking at the field of players remaining... its a joke.

[ah tat]

i saw the replay the official did warn the chn and kor pair tt they can be disqualified but they still continue to play like tt after the warning

I feel sorry for all of them they must be absolutely gothic, everyone have been working hard in the past 4 years they gave averything train hard, some injuries but in the end they have to walk away not because they've beaten by their opponents and is so sad, i blame BWF for this, they should noticed this in the first game between chinese and Koreans even before the game they shoul gathered everyone from WD department and warn them if they trying to lose they will be disqualified righ away that's Gail Emma said, they already warn bwf about this after QT/ZL lost to Padersen/Juhl, be we all know BWF is so lame

[Jagdpanther]

I think there's a difference between 'taking it easy' and 'trying (hard) to lose'.

[limsy]

Please take a look at the rankings. All because of one match? Who in the 1st place will group the top 2 in such they might end up on the same side of the draw? This is ridiculous. Such great players being maginalised.....By using a point system, which rule states that you cant take it easy? This all started from BWF, why change now? Looking at the field of players remaining... its a joke.

yeah,they are world number one,so why afraid to meet zhao/tian in quater final?
please tell me why.

[limsy]

I think there's a difference between 'taking it easy' and 'trying (hard) to lose'.

well
sometimes biased and patriotic made someone blind.

[Ningtyas]

from Yu Yang's blog:



rough translation of what she said:

"we are throwing away group match to prepare for the elimination due to injury." to ask BWF: "do you understand player's injuries? we carry injuries to play badminton for 4 yrs. now you simply just disqualified us. your heartlessness shattered our dreams"

Greysia Polii said in her Twitter account :
"We deeply feel sorry to every each of you. I know this is so hard for me an my partner, We have to have a big heart! "

"No matter what happened. We've done everything we could, we never wanted to be a loser. We want A victory from every game we play on."

"I'd like to thank you to @bwfmedia n @Olympics committee for the chances so far. We together learn how to make BADMINTON more interesting!"

https://twitter.com/GreysPolii

[event]

Kicking the offending pairs out was, IMO, probably the only thing that could have prevented badminton being removed from Rio in 2014.

Actually, it's already a done deal. There will be no Olympic badminton in Rio in 2014!

(sorry to be a pedanker )

[Loh]

By ROB HARRIS AP Sports WriterAssociated Press

Posted: 07/31/2012 11:18:40 PM PDT
August 1, 2012 10:42 PM GMTUpdated: 08/01/2012 03:42:15 PM PDT



Chief Operating Officer Thomas Lund, right, and Deputy President Paisan Rangsikitpho, of the Badminton World Federation, appear during a news conference announcing the elimination of eight female badminton doubles players at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012, in London. 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. ((AP Photo/Markus Schreiber))



LONDON—Eight badminton players at the London Olympics were kicked out of competition Wednesday for trying to lose—a display that drew outrage from fans and organizers who said the women had violated the most sacred stage in sports.

It appeared to be the first mass disqualification in Olympic history.

After an unexpected loss by a powerful Chinese doubles team, the eight women appeared to play poorly on purpose to secure a more favorable position in the next phase of the event.

The feeble play was obvious to fans who attended the matches Tuesday night at Wembley Arena—they chanted, "Off! Off! Off!"—and to incredulous television broadcasters and viewers watching around the world.

"They're serving fault and fault! They are just hitting the ball into the net!" the BBC's David Mercer said in disbelief. "They are both trying to lose, and that is unforgivable. This is the Olympic Games."

The eight players included four from South Korea, two from China and two from Indonesia. They were disqualified from competition but allowed to stay at the games—a step lighter than expulsion, the penalty for positive drug tests.

None of the players was made available for interviews. But after the match one of them, Yu Yang of China, said they were only trying to save energy for the knockout rounds, starting Wednesday.
Besides dumping serves into the net, both teams made simple errors. The longest rally was only four strokes.


The scandal was the talk of the sixth day of the Olympics, overshadowing a long-awaited first gold medal for the home country, secured at last by a pair of British rowers at Windsor.

Though the most serious to date, it's hardly been the only black eye.

On Monday, a South Korean fencer wept openly while judges took an hour to consider a disputed point, and on Tuesday, doping suspicions engulfed a teenage Chinese gold-medal swimmer.

For the most part, the blunders have been much smaller—unsightly empty seats on television, lost keys to Wembley Stadium, the South Korean flag flown instead of the North Korean at a soccer match.

Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London organizing committee, said the badminton scandal was "depressing."

"Who wants to sit through something like that?" he said.

Condemnation came quickly from some of the other 10,500 athletes, even from those who said they understood the strategy behind the decision to try to lose.

Serena Williams, who blistered a Russian opponent at Wimbledon on Wednesday to reach the Olympic quarterfinals, said she understood trying to throw points in practice, "but never, never, never in competition."

"This is definitely not within the Olympic spirit," said Lin Dan of China, the defending Olympic men's singles badminton champion.

A player on the Indonesian men's badminton team, Taufik Hidayat, called it a "circus match."

"I'm happy. I know I'm from Indonesia and the ladies' doubles are from Indonesia, but it's for the sport," he said. "It's not sporting."

For the badminton players, the moral question was somewhat more complex. Badminton was introduced at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, but this is the first time it has included a round-robin format before win-or-go-home tournament play.

The chain of manipulation was set in motion when a team from Denmark unexpectedly beat the second-seeded team in the tournament, from China. By all accounts, that match was decided fairly.

The loss put the Chinese team on course to face their compatriots, world doubles champions Wang Xiaoli and Yu, in the semifinals, not the finals, as expected.

Wang and Yu then set out to lose so they would go into the bottom half of the draw. They hardly exerted themselves—and neither did their opponents, the South Koreans, drawing jeers from the crowd and warnings from the umpire.
Wang and Yu ultimately proved better at losing.

Later, the other South Korean team tried to lose, this time to the Indonesians, to avoid meeting Wang and Yu in the quarterfinals. The Indonesians apparently had the same idea.

Early in that match, all four players were warned by the umpire for not trying hard, and the umpire later produced black cards to disqualify both pairs, but the cards were rescinded on a promise of better play.

The Indonesians ultimately succeeded at losing, and the South Koreans fell into the playoff they did not want with the world champions.

By midday Wednesday, the Badminton World Federation, the governing body of the sport, had disqualified all eight players from competing at the games. The federation rejected an appeal from South Korea. Indonesia withdrew an appeal.

The eight are Wang and Yu of China; the four South Koreans, Jung Kyun-eun, Kim Ha-na, Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung; and Meiliana Jauhari and Greysia Polii of Indonesia.

They were punished by the federation 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."

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, told The Associated Press that the IOC could take the additional step of expelling the athletes. It would mean stripping the players of their credentials and kicking them out of the athletes village. Rogge said he would wait to see what action the national Olympic committees would take.

"The international federation took the right action in disqualifying the athletes and definitely that was the way to go," Rogge said.

Craig Reedie, an IOC vice president who is also the former head of the badminton federation, had a stronger response. He suggested the athletes had taken action that undermined sport itself.

"If you lose the competitive element, then the whole thing becomes a nonsense," he told the AP.

London organizers sold tickets to the Tuesday badminton events for 20 to 75 pounds, or $31 to $117. They said they had no plans to refund money to fans and had not received requests to do so.

"You get into all sorts of strange precedents if people aren't satisfied with what they see," said Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London Olympic organizing committee.

Lin, the Chinese singles badminton player, criticized the introduction of the round-robin format rather than a straight knockout tournament as the main cause of the problem.

"If you are in a group situation no one would want to meet strong competitors in the first few rounds," Lin said. "It's not their fault. Whoever set this rule should take this into consideration."

In Olympic beach volleyball, the competition was changed after the 2000 Sydney Games from a double-elimination tournament to a round-robin format followed by a single-elimination tournament to minimize the potential for deceit.

"Players are happy, because they know nobody can manipulate or cheat," said Angelo Squeo, events director for the sport's governing federation. "I think not trying in badminton, the players should not be blamed. It's a system that has to be discussed."

The Danish players who won the badminton match that set up the sequence of events said they had seen Chinese players lose on purpose many times—it was just that they had been better at acting the other times.

"I think they have done a lot by disqualifying them here," said Kamilla Rytter Juhl, who plays doubles with Christinna Pedersen. "I didn't think anything would happen about it."

The leader of the Indonesian Olympic team also said China had done it many times. India also accused a Japanese doubles pair of trying to throw a match on Tuesday, but those claims were rejected by badminton's governing body.

The competition continued Wednesday with four previously eliminated teams in the quarterfinals. Those teams were from Russia, Canada, Australia and South Africa.

In China, an online commentary from the state-run Xinhua News Agency was critical of the players and said what they had done "violates the spirit and ethics of sports" and does not respect the audience.

Ren Dao, who was playing an afternoon match with colleagues in Beijing, went a step further.
"This is definitely against the Olympic spirit," he said.


Stephen Wilson and Gerald Imray in London, and Gillian Wong in Beijing contributed to this report.

[LazyBuddy]

they worked so hard to serve into net and return into net whole matches?

Please do not further insult the players, even though they did contribute to the mess.

Seriously, let's do not erase all their life time hard work and achievement with just 1 mistake, be it purely under their own intention, or being ordred, or whatever. 99.9999% of players (including us) will never even get a chance to play on the stage, be it a good performance, a total blown out, or a joke situation like this.

The reason they get there is due to their hard work, not because of the incident. Whether they cashed on the life dream, or screwed up due to whatever reason, is the aftermath...