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羽毛球——ABC：国际羽联成为众矢之的。Badminton in turmoil after players tossed out of Olympics
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The disqualification of eight badminton players for throwing matches has sent Olympic organisers into damage control and called the integrity of the sport itself into question.
The deliberate "tanking" by the Chinese top seeds, two teams from South Korea, and an Indonesian pair was booed by the crowd at London's Wembley Arena and was ridiculed by the Olympics' global audience.
The eight players are believed to have been throwing the pool matches to improve their chances of progressing through the later stages of the competition and eventually winning gold.
The sport’s international governing body, the Badminton World Federation, yesterday found the four teams guilty of "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".
The women, including China’s world champion team of Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang, have no other competition in London and are likely to be sent home from the Games in disgrace.
There were also further match-throwing accusations against the Japanese team from the Indian coach, but badminton's governing body rejected the complaint.
Jo Muggeridge, a British Olympic badminton player who competed at the Barcelona and Atlanta Games, says the tournament is a mess.
"The problem you have got now is you have lost top four pairs," she said.
"So now the Olympics is going to be won by someone else. And really those top four pairs have been disqualified and it is not going to be a true champion is it? I don't think so."
Muggeridge said the disqualified pairs were taking advantage of the system used in the Olympic competition.
"I would not want to be in the crowd and be watching matches like that. You know you are watching rubbish."
"I have no idea why they changed it to a group system. They are just playing the system. You know it is awful for the crowd to come along to watch, but it if you have got a situation where you are going to meet the next best pair in the round if you win, you don’t want to do that.
"So I can understand what they have done."
'Such a shame'
The practice of throwing a match in order to score an easier place in the knockout stages is not isolated to badminton, but, according to today's Olympians like Denmark's Christinna Pedersen, the sport is rife with it.
"I think it's really important they do something about it because we've been seeing it a lot," she said.
"It's a shame for our sport that all of us love so much. I can't believe they could do it at the Olympics. It's such a shame."
German badminton player Marc Zwiebler says the dark tactic of tanking's very public outing has been painful, but needed.
"I'm glad they did it in such a public place as the Olympic Games. Usually it happens in the Asian tournaments [and] the Asian media don't talk about it."
One of the few positives to come from the mass badminton disqualification was Australia's short-lived second chance at Olympic glory.
The eliminated Australian doubles team of Leanne Choo and Renuga Veeran were re-entered into quarter-finals after the disqualifications, but lost against Canada in three sets.
Renuga Veeran said she was proud of her achievement.
"No [Australian] has [made the Olympic quarter-finals] for the past 12 years," she said,.
"I mean how often does that happen in badminton? Especially at the Olympics as well. That was tremendous."
The 26-year-old doesn't believe the expulsion of the best players in the world will deprive the London Games of a true Olympic badminton champion.
"Sport is about being fair and square and [in] badminton you do not need to do stuff like that to get a medal."
"China are the best team, but I think every team should believe in itself, that they could achieve. So I definitely think that whoever wins it, truly deserves it, and all the best to them."
Australia does not want to go back to knock-out stages in the early rounds again. Australia badminton coach Lasse Bundgaard says the system just needs a bit of tweaking.
"I just hope we can [have] pool matches again next time, but maybe just have a bit of different rules so we can continue doing this format and people don’t know who they are going to play," he said.
"I think the format is fantastic, like it gets to showcase much more badminton matches because we play in pools. I really, really hope that that will continue when it is 2016 in Rio."
The Olympic badminton tournament is not over and neither is the tanking controversy. Players are having to defend the sport they love and explaining how it is possible to play to lose. |
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发表于 2012-8-2 13:51
