Badminton instituted this goofy round-robin system that sometimes makes it advantageous for teams to lose. They cannot deny this. Of course, they do anyway. The Badminton World Federation made it clear on Wednesday that while, yes, there have been a couple of kinks, the system has been a big “success.”
Yes, this is like saying that, other than the tiny flaw where there’s an open exhaust port that leads right to [the] reactor that, if hit, would blow up everything, the Death Star was exceedingly well-built....
You have to see the video. Because while all of that is true about the system being bad, and players always looking for ways to get an advantage, there is no way that anyone could overlook the sham of that video. These athletes were thumbing their noses at the Olympics, the fans, the sport. Had they had some fun with it — you know, try a few behind-the-back shots, switched hands, put their partner on their shoulder, used the $1.99 racket you can get at Target, hit the shuttlecock into the crowd — maybe it would have been OK. At least it would have been fun.
But just hitting the shuttlecock into the net again and again, even while the crowd booed, and the officials threatened and the sport they love (a sport that wasn’t exactly a momentous one in the first place) was turned into a mockery — no, that’s not acceptable.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
WORSEMINTON: Joe Posnanski with more on the women's doubles badminton scandal:
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