Well.... depends on what you were watching. Somebody was lighting something.
(from USATODAY.com)
Posted on 08/01/2012 2:06:24 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Eight women's doubles badminton players from China, South Korea, and Indonesia were disqualified today after throwing matches in order to manipulate future match-ups. After the four women's pairs had qualified for the quarterfinals of the tournament, they began intentionally losing games in order to dictate a more favorable match-up in the next round.
The disqualified players included the world champions from China — Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang, as well as the bronze-medal favorites Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min Jung of South Korea.
So why in the world would they lose on purpose?
Basically, they wanted to avoid playing the 2nd best team in the world in the quarterfinals.
In Olympic badminton, there is a preliminary stage followed by a knockout stage. In the prelim stage, the teams are divided into four, four-team groups and play a round-robin. The top two teams from each group advance to an eight-team, bracket-style knockout tournament. In that knockout tournament, the team that came in 1st in Group A plays the team that came in 2nd in Group B, and so on.
The reason the pairs started losing games in the first place was that the second-best team in the world (Tian Qing & Zhao Yunlei of China) were upset in their group stage and came in 2nd instead of 1st. As a result, Wang/Yu and Ha/Kim tried to lose on purpose so they wouldn't win their group and have to play Tian/Zhao in the next round.
The same thing happened with the other two pairs that were DQ'd.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The Match Throw....coming to an Olympics near you.
I can understand this. I mean, it would be a tragedy if the stadium burned down.
'nuff said.
t wouldn’t be the Olympics if the Chi-coms weren’t cheating.
ok, I’ll ask: wtf: badminton, badmitton?
I am so dumb-—until I read the whole article I thought they were disqualified for literally throwing matches—as in the kind that make fire.
SOME TRIVIA ABOUT THE SPORT — BADMINTON
________________________
The beginnings of badminton can be traced to mid-18th century British India, where it was created by British military officers stationed there.
Early photographs show Englishmen adding a net to the traditional English game of battledore and shuttlecock.
Being particularly popular in the British garrison town Poona (now Pune), the game also came to be known as Poona.
Initially, balls of wool referred as ball badminton were preferred by the upper classes in windy or wet conditions, but ultimately the shuttlecock stuck. This game was taken by retired officers back to England where it developed and rules were set out.
Although it appears clear that Badminton House, Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of Beaufort, has given its name to the sports, it is unclear when and why the name was adopted.
As early as 1860, Isaac Spratt, a London toy dealer, published a booklet, Badminton Battledore – a new game, but unfortunately no copy has survived.
An 1863 article in The Cornhill Magazine describes badminton as “battledore and shuttlecock played with sides, across a string suspended some five feet from the ground”.
This early use has cast doubt on the origin through expatriates in India, though it is known that it was popular there in the 1870s and that the first rules were drawn up in Poonah in 1873.
As early as 1875, veterans returning from India started a club in Folkestone. Until 1887, the sport was played in England under the rules that prevailed in British India. The Bath Badminton Club standardized the rules and made the game applicable to English ideas. J.H.E. Hart drew up revised basic regulations in 1887 and, with Bagnel Wild, again in 1890.
In 1893, the Badminton Association of England published the first set of rules according to these regulations, similar to today’s rules, and officially launched badminton in a house called “Dunbar” at 6 Waverley Grove, Portsmouth, England on September 13 of that year.
They also started the All England Open Badminton Championships, the first badminton competition in the world, in 1899.
The International Badminton Federation (IBF) (now known as Badminton World Federation) was established in 1934 with Canada, Denmark, England, France, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales as its founding members. India joined as an affiliate in 1936. The BWF now governs international badminton and develops the sport globally.
While initiated in England, competitive men’s badminton in Europe has traditionally been dominated by Denmark.
Asian nations, however, have been the most dominant ones worldwide. Indonesia, South Korea, China, and Malaysia along with Denmark are among the nations that have consistently produced world-class players in the past few decades, with China being the greatest force in both men’s and women’s competition in recent years.
LOL!
Say it ain’t so Wang! SAY IT AIN’T SO!!!!
Man, that video was embarrassing. Both teams just keep pitifully serving into the net. The umpire calls them to the center of the court to tell them to knock-it-off ... and they start back up almost immediately.
The rules of this sport are obviously screwy ... but, from that video, they were enough of an embarrassment to justify bouncing them.
SnakeDoc
Dozens of badminton fans around the world are in an uproar over this.
The trouble is not the rules of the sport, but the competition format instituted for the Olympics, namely round robin Group Play.
Under a single elimination format, this would never happen.
But under Group Play, top tier teams, who are almost guaranteed to advance to the next round, gain a competitive advantage in next round by avoiding other top teams due to "seeding".
They are not wanting to lose because of gambling or anything similar . They are wanting to lose for strategic reasons in an effort to obtain the best result for themselves in the overall competition. I think they should be able to just forfeit a match if that is what they want to do. If both teams want to lose, just flip a coin and run like hell to keep the ticket buyers from tearing them apart. Expecting a team to play their best when it is disadvantageous to their overall prospects is the height of political correctness thinking.
Well.... depends on what you were watching. Somebody was lighting something.
(from USATODAY.com)
It’s a racket.
I hope they aren't too attached to their kidneys.
Badminton? Really?
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