Olympic doubles badminton descends into farce
Rob Jones reports from Wembley Arena
The Olympic women’s doubles badminton at Wembley Arena degenerated into disgrace as teams appeared to deliberately throw away points.
Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli of China, ranked No 1, and Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na of South Korea, seeded 8, put on a display that would have disappointed a primary school PE teacher.
At one stage 21 points passed without a single rally over three shots. Not content with being unable to keep points going, the players then descended another notch. Eight serves went out or into the net, leaving a frustrated crowd booing and crying “Off, off, off”.
The officials intervened but the standard didn’t improve.
Both pairs had already qualified for the knockout stages and the losers in the match would avoid playing China’s highly-rated second pair until the final of the competition.
For the record, Korea 'won' 2-0.
"Actually these opponents really were strong. This is the first time we've played them and tomorrow it's the knockout rounds, so we've already qualified and we wanted to have more energy for the knockout rounds," Yu told Reuters.
"Really, it's not necessary to go out hard again when the knockout rounds are tomorrow."
It was a game made for empty seats, but unfortunately the Arena seemed to be the only venue where the corporates bothered to turn up.
They’ll be regretting that now.
Should boot them out and open the door to other countries that failed to qualify. Give it to those who actually want to participate and take the sport seriously. I mean people have paid for tickets to watch the best play the best not to just turn up and take the mickey. No offence to China or Korea but I would be ashamed of your athletes, thought you trained to win no matter what. It is a sorry day for London we don't need it, best thing disqualify them.
It is a countries responsibility to ensure that those representing it perform in the spirit of the game and the Olympics.
I do sympathise with the koreans somewhat, as they were the lesser of two evils and perhaps their actions were born out of retaliation. However, both teams were clearly cheating and such behaviour will be reciprocated if seen to go unpunished. Both teams should be disqualified to send out a clear message regarding the responsibilities of olympic athletes. Never has foul-play been so blatant.
