London Olympics: Badminton scandal continues to reverberate

LONDON -- The disgruntled crowd at Wembley Arena booed and loudly urged the now-dishonored badminton players to get off the court.

Yu Yang of China apparently is going one step beyond that, putting down her racket for good and will hit the shuttlecock no more. She took the step of announcing the move herself though social media -- Tencent Weibo -- saying goodbye to “dear badminton.”

This came after eight female badminton players -- including Yu Yang and her doubles partner, Wang Xiaoli -- were kicked out of the Olympic Games by the sport’s international federation on Wednesday for seeming to tank round-robin matches to get an easier draw in the quarterfinals.

The fallout after the seemingly unprecedented mass disqualification continued. Reports in China added to the intrigue behind the scenes. Team officials said that Wang Xiaoli injured her right knee in the midst of pre-match warmups, causing the highly regarded doubles team to hold back against South Koreans.

The online badminton publication, Badzine, ran an article late last year, analyzing match statistics from tournaments in 2011 and concluded:

“More than 20 percent of matches is either not finished or not played when Chinese shuttlers play against their own compatriots. Chinese shuttlers met each other 99 times on the circuit this year, and 20 matches were either not played at all (11 walkovers) or played partially before one of the opponents retired (9 retirements).

“This shows that 20.20% of matches between Chinese shuttlers were not completed in 2011.

”... These figures have to be put in perspective as China has the largest contingent of players at high level -- more than a third of the matches played between compatriots (99 of 289 matches) are played between Chinese shuttlers. Never the less, it has raised some questions amongst the badminton community.”

Meanwhile, in the midst of the seriousness of the issue and the impact of the controversy on the sport, there was this humorous look at the wild night at Wembley, via those video visionaries over at the Wall Street Journal.

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