Shameful display by Shi YuQi! Neither Antonsen or Axelsen retired at match point when they lost badly to Momota, 3-21 and 4-21 respectively. Lee Chong Wei did not retire when he lost to Lin Dan in the 2008 Beijing olympics Final. He gracefully accepted defeat/loss. Shi YuQi is far from Chen Long, in terms of skills/achievement and attitude. I remember Chen Long lost 10-21 and 8-21 to Axelsen in 2017 World Championships but Chen Long didn’t retire at match point.
Thanks for your reply, Woesi. Interesting breakdown of his body language during the interview - it provides a different perspective to this situation that I can’t think of myself. I’m also on the criticizing side and think what he did is not right, but considering this possibility, make sense to some and not to others, I can view the event with more opened mind. Deserving the hate or not is totally up to SYQ himself now, in my humble opinion. Ups and downs happen in everyone’s life and I hope this’ll be one of those one-time, unusual downs that never occurred again in the future once he learned from it. I still believe in his excellent sportsmanship he has been shown for years, even though I’ll never know if that’s his true color or not. I want to continue supporting him like this - appreciate his bright side while also acknowledge the other side. This may changes if he somehow do it again, but let that be the matter of future for now. Ps. I’m sorry if my sentiment(?) is too long and doesn’t really relate with you reply. My friends don’t watch badminton and my family doesn’t want to discuss about this, so I kinda struggle to find a place to express my opinion. I hope everyone and anyone reading this an enjoyable, peaceful day.
BWF or CCP shd audit his handphone. In case there's match fixing notes like Malaysian Zulfaldi and Tan Choon Seang. Thorough investigation to clear all possibilities. BWF need to remove the retirement voiding HTH count. Any retirement or walkover is considered a loss. Wonder why he stood so low. lol Very shameful. Unprofessional. This will stick with him forever. His kids will see this. Great role model.
Are you going to make the same call for Intanon's retirement to Chen Yufei at 2-5 in G1, and Akane's outrageous loss to An Seyoung in the semifinal as she then went on to play superbly in the final against CYF? Be careful of your possibly libelous accusation. In the past there were cases where some players (I won't name them but I think they know who they are) who retired on grounds of injury only to play the next day. Nothing happened, nobody complained or protested. Why don't you lodge a complaint to BWF yourself or get a lawyer to represent you?
SYQ's "retiring not is losing" is clearly meant to be some self-deprecating humor. "Waiting to see who will retire first" is real. That may not be part of any moral teaching but a real life wisdom that people learn and do but not say. The real shocker is how poorly that the Chinese players are trained in PR. Being a public figure, projected honesty is a virtue, real honesty is a flaw. Given the political climate these days, look no further than this thread to understand.
I think that post-match interview is just as unfortunate as what SYQ did during the match where he botched G2 after a narrow loss by deuce 20-22 in G1, and then for whatever rhyme or reason decided to throw in the towel at one matchpoint shy of outright defeat. Counterfactually speaking, if SYQ had won G1 by deuce, he probably would've continued to the very end just as he did the week before in the Sudirman Cup Final against the same opponent. Instead it ended the way it actually did as the pressure of the occasion mounted to the extent that he simply couldn't function normally as he melt down in distressed and perhaps suffered a nervous breakdown. The came the post-match interview which he couldn't avoid as the BWF rules require that every athlete attend a post-match interview or face a penalty. I'm sure his immediate instinct was to hide himself away from everybody for a while but what we witnessed was him being subjected to an interviewer out to question him in an interrogative manner about sportsmanship and fair play by repeatedly pressing him for an answer as if the only acceptable response was for SYQ to admit wrongdoing and kowtow in apology and ask for forgiveness. As we can see, the poor bloke was not in his right state of mind and mumbled incoherently some inane comments that did him more harm than good. His head must be in a whirl and his heart in agony to even know what he's talking about, I supposed. Perhaps it'd have been better if he simply muttered words like, " I don't know, I can't comment, I'm sorry I don't know what to say, I need to take a break and think about it, reflect on it and do better next time, thank you, please excuse me, etc," in suchlike, rather than attempt to explain away what happened, which ended up making things worse for him and casting him in an even worse light, no thanks to what's partly lost in translations. Bad optics generally, and cause for regret later. He really needs to do some soul searching and to make amends in future tournaments. It will be such a pity for a talent like him to go to waste. After all is said and done, it's up to him to do the right thing, to take charge of his career and life. Come back stronger, Shi Yuqi.
Could it be that the relapsed injury and recalling the time & efforts it took in the long two years rehabilitation process, then the additional time and efforts to regain his old form , really depressed him from the inside and made him, a nasty figure, blind and dejected by his broken beliefs and broken fate?
As poor were his choice of words and in the first place, his lack of sportsmanship against KM, who never did a mistake or said something stupid in their life? That being said, I think it will have an impact on his mental and most likely on his actual game for the next few tournaments. Badminton fans won't let it go easily too. He shot himself in the foot. He did not need that.
I’m actually happy that he didn’t let it go easily. In some more “established” sports likely someone will have stopped him already (sadly). SYQ needs to face the consequence, the least he can do is to face the question. As we saw, he can’t find a good answer to the fairness question, which in ok, he probably didn’t think that much when he retired. But this is a good lesson for him to know that sportsmanship still means something.
Your examples don’t compare well. I have never seen anyone did anything like this in any sport. A line needs to be drawn between gamesmanship and sportsmanship. And by the way, Intanon admitted clearly that her objective was to let Thai other single players to play at more natural spots. That strategy is a lot more straightforward than SYQ’s convoluted thinking (e.g. he played the “maximum” before “technically” losing to see if his opponent would retire before him). And Intanon played only 7 points. There is no comparison between the two cases.
SYQ is one of my favourite and respected CHN players. He is well mannered on court and never showed any negative emotions. Just playing his badminton. Looking forward to seeing him play in the future. But as a sportsperson and during match point (whatever his mental state was in), not allowing your opponent to complete his victory, isn't very good. Nothing to do with KM on the other side of the court. Would he do the same if it was other opponents or in some domestic competitions? How would his reaction be if the situation was the other way round?
Why, is it really gamemanship (an expedient or morally questionable act to gain an unfair advantage) to retire on grounds of injury only to play the next day, more acceptable than unsportmanslike conduct ? Don't be so sure you've never seen anything like that in any sport. So Intanon retiring on false pretenses at just only 7 points into the game is all right but not when one matchpoint away, which means, to you , it's a matter of when you retire? Ask Momota how he feel about it, watch his post-match interview. By the way, what SYQ said at the interview was a careless and stupid mistake. Does it mean if he hadn't made the booboo you're willing to let it go just like you would for Intanon? The lesson for SYQ is to retire several points before matchpoints? Anyway, according to his social media post, he mentioned something about a body discomfort caused by inflammation of his left foot toenail that was carried over from the Sudirman Cup that affected his movement on court. Reported here https://sports.sina.com.cn/others/badmin/2021-10-17/doc-iktzscyy0207203.shtml - up to you to believe him or not. I'm sure he's paying the price for it, pretty certain there is a group of Chinese netizens who will be slamming and hounding him for quite a while. I trust he would learn a valuable lesson from it - "I'm grateful to all the people who support me, and also to some of the netizens for training my mentality," he said of the online comments.
Shi Yuqi will have to bear the consequences of his own action. As for the rest of us, to err is human, to forgive divine (it is human nature to make mistakes oneself while finding it hard to forgive others.)
Probably the after-effect of struggling to make a comeback during the long two-year period post-injury coming to a head at the wrong time, wrong place. If he survives it, mostly what he has to face from the fans, apart from his own self-reflection, and achieves self-mastery, who knows, he might one day blossom into a great player.
To me, there is a HUGE difference between retiring at match point vs retiring any time else (even two points away is notably better). At match point, there was no reason not to play another point to let the match complete. He himself didn’t deny it: he never said he couldn’t go one more point. He said he retired at that moment to “technically not lose” (I paraphrase). To properly finish the match (when you can) is sportsmanship. He didn’t display good sportsmanship, which I can’t see how anyone can argue otherwise. Now did SYQ have any ill intention? I don’t think so at all. I don’t think he meant anything bad toward Momota. In his mind, it’s just a way to compete given his physical condition. But that doesn’t mean this was the right thing to do. He should learn the lesson and play with better sportsmanship. That’s all. And it’s really silly to bring Intanon into this case. If anything, Intanon’s behavior is comparable to SYQ’s retirement against Lu Guangzu in last year’s China Open. And while there were some chatters, no one really gave him any hard time about it.
No, there's a difference but not HUGE. And I disagree that you made a big difference between Intanon's gamemanship (an expedient or morally questionable act to gain an unfair advantage; whatever it takes to win) with poor sportsmanship or being a sore loser, a bad sport, which is SYQ's case. To me, the former is just as bad, if not worse than the latter. As you know, I've called out SYQ's bad sportsmanship. As for Momota himself, I quote kuarko's translation (thanks to her): "(Regarding SYQ's retirement at 20-5) I don't know why my opponent retired at 20-5, but I hope that he is not injured. If possible, I would have liked to have taken the last point, but as I was able to gain a point for my team, I am not concerned about it."
Let’s not bring in Intanon or Momota (His reply is like from the book, what else do you expect him to say). This is about SYQ displaying very poor sportsmanship. For all the poor behaviors people have disliked (taunting, screaming, not returning shuttle properly, refusing to shake hands, excessive timeouts, or in other sports, diving or faking injury, stealing signals…), this episode ranks very high on the list if not the highest. And for what reason? It’s really a dumb thing to do. Just my opinion~
To me, Momota is one who speaks his mind, his candour, his willingness to face up to reality, not being in denial, not giving lame excuses, acknowledging his weakness and shortcomings, and what to improve upon - is what earns my respect and admiration. For I believe, such an attitude and characteristic of his will enable him to bounce back from failures and defeats time and again, as long as he doesn't give up, as long as his body and mind permit. As for SYQ, that mistake that you regarded as very high on the list if not the highest of "misbehaviour" is one that does little to no harm to others except himself who suffers the most - his opponent lost nothing other than the inner satisfaction of winning the final point as the match was still awarded to him and JPN was one match to the good to start off the tie. I hope to see you hold every athlete to the same high standard (though it's clear you think next to nothing of what IR and AY were involved in). As for myself, I was a bit harsh on SYQ as I have high hopes of him, esp after his stirring victory over Momota at the Sudirman Cup final which elevated his standing in my eyes, the more so when he proclaimed he's going to perform at 120 percent of his previous best . Imagine my dismay barely two weeks later at the Thomas Cup semifinal with JPN against the same opponent, he went from a high to a low, virtually undoing all that he's gained. I came down quite hard on him until later when I read the posts of @Woesi and @toonbaka whose views were more balanced and detached whereas mine tended to be over-reactive and emotionally invested that I learned to put things in proper perspective. I was like a parent who was overly concerned and anxious to see my child live well, do good and succeed in life that every mistake he makes, big or small, worries me unduly. Never mind, I digress too much. Let's see if what SYQ asserted that he would do 120 percent better than before is not braggadocio or bravado or both. Time will tell. Cheerio.
I If my kid did what SYQ did, I would disown him/her You need to lose gracefully, no matter how bad of a day you just had. I just saw in the news a commentator was called out for not announcing the away team’s winning goal in American football (he went silent as the goal was made). Same deal, more so for players. Anyway, you seem to take criticism too seriously. I have nothing against SYQ. I don’t think this is a calculated “low” move at all. I’m not attacking his character or his intelligence. It was just a stupid thing. There is no need to find excuses for him…
