The Villians

     I may be being a bit premature, but...
  
    I believe we have identified the villians of the London Games.  True, it is only Day 6, but I can't imagine anything happening the rest of the way that will make this situation seem even remotely OK.  So, here they are folks, the Forbidden Eight:

    Wang Xiaoli
    Yu Yang
    Jung Kyung Eun
    Kim Ha Na
    Ha Jung Eun
    Kim Min Jung
    Meilana Jauhari
    Greysia Polii

       In the sport of badminton, China, South Korea and Indonesia have dominated world play since the seventies.  The likelihood that the United States, Germany, Canada, were going to medal in this sport, or even compete at a high level is ludicrous.  It is more of a mismatch than the US women's basketball team against Angola -  I believe that one ended 90-38.

      In badminton, competition is structured in a round-robin format, where multiple (deliberate) losses in the early rounds would put a team into the bottom half of a knockout draw.  Simply put, if you set up your losses, you'd get weaker opponents to face later.

     The second seeded Chinese team lost, unexpectedly to Denmark, and so, would have, all things considered, met their countrymates in the semis, instead of the final.  It isn't good enough, eviently, to play for bronze, when you can lose and perhaps end up locked in a final, and take gold and silver - even if it means cheating to get there.  And yes, cheating includes playing to lose, which the Chinese, Koreans and Indonesians all did.

   Evidently, this has been going on for some time.  The Chinese have done it n International play before.  I'm only slightly sympathetic to the notion that the structure is to blame, that if play weren't round-robin, and the draw could not be manipulated this way, this would not happen.

    I know the Olympics have a sorry history of blood doping and performance enhancing drug use.  To me, the one thing that you simply cannot do at the Olympics is tank.  You just can't deliberately lose.  It's a bad thing to do anywhere, but, at the Games, where the sport is the thing, it is, as the IOC rightly stated, "not aceptable."

   And so, the eight were disqualified and sent home. Yu Yang blogged to her more than one million followers, "Farewell, my dear badminton..."

    Really, Yu?  You offer a fare thee well to the sport you just dishonored?  How exactly, do you think, the sport could fare with players like you in it?

    Good riddance.