London 2012: Badminton -- Scandal or Strategy? - Joe Chacon's Blog

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Joe Chacon's Blog

London 2012: Badminton -- Scandal or Strategy? Stuck

Posted on August 2, 2012 at 12:52 PM.

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As you've probably heard by now, four badminton teams were removed from the London Games for throwing their matches. The teams, which consisted of players from China, South Korea, and Indonesia, were not necessarily trying to hide the fact they were losing on purpose either.

The fans in London nearly booed the players from China off the court, and an official even stepped in during the match to talk to the Chinese players, Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, during their match against South Korea.

Each of the teams involved in what the media is calling a "scandal" were attempting to lose on purpose so that they would face a more favorable matchup in the knockout tournament.

The act of losing intentionally goes against what embodies the Olympic spirit, but was it right to have those teams removed from the games?

This act or "strategy" of losing on purpose comes up towards the end of nearly every NFL, NBA, and MLB season.

In the NBA the last few games of the season can mean the difference between a bad team having more favorable odds of a higher draft pick should they lose.

The same can be said for the NFL. In fact, the NFL doesn't have a lottery system in place so the thought that two teams with bad records would want to throw the game to set themself up for a top pick hasn't gone without debate.

We don't hear much about the MLB draft in the media, but the way the playoffs are structured sometimes gives the Wild Card winner a more preferable first round matchup than the division winner. This is something that comes up in the NFL and NBA as well.

The jockeying for position during the regular season and hypotheticals about who a team may play depending on if they win or lose is prevalent in almost every league, but how many times can we recall seeing a team lose in such a way that we knew it was on purpose? Personally, I haven't witnessed it once...until this happened with the badminton teams.

What do you think, scandal or strategy? Should these teams been removed from competition? What comes to mind when you think about instances in the past where a team has lost on purpose?

Joe Chacon is a Staff Writer for Operation Sports. You can follow him on Twitter @JoeChacon.

Comments

# 1 JerzeyReign @ Aug 2

Strategy. Can't fault competitive players for trying to use a loophole to their advantage.

# 2 chi_hawks @ Aug 2

Answer is to restructure how the knockout round gets seeded. Similar to how the nba threw in the lottery draft to discourage tanking.

# 3 Layoneil @ Aug 2

tanking in pro-sports aren't as obvious because of the divide between players and management. the team might want a higher draft pick but the players still need to play at their best so that they don't look bad on film for future contract talks.

the real tanking comes with coaches sitting out their better players due to "injuries".

the rules in this case should be changed. losing games to be more competitive is an oxymoron.

# 4 Retropyro @ Aug 2

Is the basketball team tanking games to get a lower seating? Do Canada, Russia, Sweden or the U.S. tank it in Olympic hockey? They play round robin.

# 5 DrSpaceman7 @ Aug 2

Peter Forsberg admitted that Sweden did it in the 2006 Olympics to avoid Canada or Russia in the quarters, so yes.

# 6 brettford @ Aug 3

Yea this occupies a different space than throwing a match because you are getting paid on the side. Everybody still wants to win the gold, then the silver, then the bronze. So let them sort it out.

It's not comparable (but you could argue its somewhat similar) to when you see swimmers swim "just" fast enough to get into the finals. Does that mean they aren't trying their best? Yea. But its part of the ultimate strategy to set themselves up to win the best medal.