Olympic female badminton players face charges

Match should have been stopped and they should have been DQ'd on the spot. Them being "through already" is no reason to do this.

Totally agree - They should have been given a warning, and then if they continued, straight DQ.

I don't care if it was "strategy"... thousands of people payed good money to see a competitive match, and they didn't get that at all.
 
Totally agree - They should have been given a warning, and then if they continued, straight DQ.

I don't care if it was "strategy"... thousands of people payed good money to see a competitive match, and they didn't get that at all.

Thousands of people pay good money to see the weightlifting events where the top athletes put down some crazy weights for their entry effort, making everyone else try their top weights from the outset and getting a vast number of athletes failing at the snatch, losing any chance of a medal.

Then the top athletes typically lower their entry weight after most people have used up most of their efforts. That happened yesterday as well. no one is complaining.

The athletes are competing to win the top spot, not necessarily for pleasing the crowds.

Would you ask for your money back at football if a team played defensively for a draw so as to stay in the league or to progress at the next round of a championship or something?
 
As a former high-level badminton player and coach I found this absolutely disgusting and appalling.

It is a dark day for the sport and really puts out the completely wrong message - this is the olympic games!

I would personally like to see them all disqualified to send a strong message and restore faith in the sport and to dissipate this cloud before it lingers too long.

Then, immediately after the games change the format so this can never happen again.
 
^thats a bit different to blatantly serving faults on purpose like the women were doing

This is key.

They weren't simply playing a defensive game, they were deliberately playing faults in order to loose.

Its like the difference between just playing a slow defensive game of football to run down the clock, and deliberately scoring own goals.
 
rather than knowing who you will play in the next round why not just have it a random draw or something

You would still need to split it into 2 pots, to avoid people from the same group playing again in the next round, and this wouldn't stop the Chinese doing what they were doing, as all they were aiming to achieve was to get one team into 1 half, and the other team into the other half.

Football tackle it by making the final group games be played at the same time, but as the Brazil/GBR womens game showed, this still wouldn't solve the problem if you have 2 teams equally dominate a group.
 
Its like the difference between just playing a slow defensive game of football to run down the clock, and deliberately scoring own goals.

Exactly. If I paid £££ to go to somewhere like Old Trafford or Wembley and watched both teams sticking the ball in their own net to give themselves a better draw i'd be fuming.

They should have warned them both, then DQ'd them both.
 
It's hardly the Olympic spirit is it, playing the long game is one thing but if they were truly playing to win they'd win ALL of their matches. Whether it affected their medal chances or not.
 
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