Badminton Players Disqualified for Throwing Matches
By KEN BELSONPublished: August 1, 2012
LONDON — Badminton officials took the extraordinary step of tossing out four pairs of women — two from South Korea and one each from China and Indonesia — for deliberately trying to lose their preliminary matches Tuesday night, the latest judging controversy to sweep through the Olympics.
The decision less than a day after the final matches in the preliminary rounds of the women’s doubles immediately threw the tournament into turmoil, and is likely to prompt protests and rule changes in the coming days and weeks. Korea and Indonesia have appealed the decision, and officials hoped to rule on the appeal within an hour.
Officials from the Badminton World Federation, the sport’s governing body, determined that the four sets of women violated the Players’ Code of Conduct, Sections 4.5 and 4.6, 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 two separate matches, the players appeared to be trying to serve into the net and hitting shots wide out of bounds. Their play led to hoots and catcalls from the packed house at Wembley Arena, with some fans yelling, “Off, off, off.” The shouting and boos cascaded over a match on a nearby court. In one match, a Danish umpire warned the players that they risked being tossed by flashing a black card, a rare action in the sport.
The disqualified players are Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang from China, the top-ranked women’s doubles pair, who lost Tuesday to the South Korean team of Jung Kyung-eun, top, and Kim Ha-na, who were also thrown out. The players were presumed to be trying to lose because neither wanted to face the second-ranked women’s pair of Tian Qing and Zhao Yunlei in the quarterfinals.
Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung of South Korea and Meilana Jauhari and Greysia Polli of Indonesia were also thrown out for intentionally lackluster play in a later match Tuesday.
Even before the disqualifications, the matches Tuesday night triggered hand-wringing throughout the sport. This is the first Olympics to include preliminary rounds where four teams played one another once to determine who advanced to the knockout stage. All four pairs who played Tuesday night had won spots in the quarterfinals, so jockeying for an opponent —not winning or losing —was the imperative.
Because the Chinese so dominate the sport and are so numerous in the tournament, they have incentive not to play one another when possible.
And because they are so good, teams from other countries do their best to avoid the Chinese until there is no choice.
Some former players and commentators in Britain called the play unsportsmanlike and an affront to the fans who paid dearly to see top-ranked players compete. But some of them accepted that players should not be blamed for playing strategically to win.
Other players blamed the badminton federation for not anticipating this kind of strategy when it redesigned the tournament.
“They should have thought ahead and seen that this kind of situation might happen and thought what they could have done to avoid this situation and stop it happening again in the future,” Lin Dan, the world’s best men’s singles player, who is from China, said after winning a match Wednesday. “Think in the U.K., would your football team want to meet Spain in the first round? Athletes think for themselves and would have their best interests at heart.”
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