And I Will Try To Fix You

Most Olympic games have their fair share of cheating incidents. In 1988 USA boxer Rob Jones Jr somehow lost his gold medal match despite pummelling his South Korean opponent. In 2004 a Hungarian fencing official admitted he deliberately handed out several errors to the Chinese men's foil team in the final in which they eventually lost, resulting in a two year ban for him.

This week at the London games we have seen some of the most blatant match fixing you will ever see, in the women's doubles badminton event. The Badminton World Federation have today disqualified eight players from the games after their farcical conduct in trying to deliberately lose as to get better position in the elimination rounds. Here are some of my thoughts on this debacle.
(To watch the footage of the first game which triggered it off, go to the official Olympic Youtube Channel and find the last prelim Mens/Womens video for the 31 July-NZ time- which starts at the '27min' mark. Go an hour into the video and you'll see the top Chinese team playing the South Korean team).

• I don't think I have ever seen such blatant match fixing in my entire life. OK maybe this time. The Chinese certainly didn't try to hide it, even after being warned twice in the match. I mean we are talking about the No.1 ranked Chinese team here, I would play better then that right now.
• It seems the Chinese have a history of doing this in other badminton competitions as well. They have ended up with two teams playing in finals play several times event though they were supposed to play if they had won all their matches like they usually do. Why do they allow multiple teams from the same country in the first place?
• I feel sorry for the South Korean team who played the Chinese- it really didn't seem like they were trying to lose the match- more resigned to the fact that the Chinese wanted to lose more then they did so they went along with it.
• The governing body of Badminton has to take the blame for not making the competition a knock out style rather then group based as it is this year. You are just inviting athletes to throw games to get better position in the playoffs. 
• It seems also that the sport has a known problem amongst the participants of the sport and that this latest incident was forecast the day before: These quotes come from Gail Emms, the former Great Briton Badminton player, who voiced her concerns over the fixing to the Guardian:

"All the managers got together with the referee and said: 'Look, this has happened; in Group D you will find some very dodgy matches going on in the evening because of it' and the referee laughed and said: 'Oh don't be silly,'" she said. "And the managers said: 'We know the game, we know the players and we know the teams and we know this is going to happen.'"

She added: "Badminton, in the Olympics and in all tournaments across the circuit, it's never played in a group stage, it's always a straight knockout system and for some reason they decided that the Olympic Games in 2012 should be this group stages.

"And as soon as I heard that I went: 'It's going to bring up match-fixing,' that was my first thought, and lo and behold last night that is exactly what happened."

If this is all true and this meeting did occur, then it highlights serious shortfalls in the culture of Badminton. I mean if Emms, a former player,  knew straight away that the change in format would result in match fixing at the Olympics then there needs to be a serious change within the sport. Athletes, regardless of competition or sport, should always strive to play the best to their ability and not cheapen the sport by fixing matches. This incident is going to have some short term repercussions for the reputation of competitive Badminton but hopefully the governing bodies can learn from its mistakes and rectify this problematic culture of fixing just like cricket is.

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Peace

Photo sourced from telegraph.co.uk