ONE OF THE star Chinese badminton players disqualified from the Olympics for throwing a match has announced she is quitting the sport, saying her dreams had been “heartlessly shattered”.
Yu, who won a gold medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and her partner Wang Xiaoli were disqualified by the Badminton World Federation on Wednesday for “not using one’s best efforts to win a match”.
“This is my last time competing. Goodbye Badminton World Federation, goodbye my beloved badminton,” Yu Yang said on her Weibo, or microblog, late Wednesday. “You have heartlessly shattered our dreams.”
Interviewed before the latest announcement Yu and Wang, who were among China’s star players, winning the world championship in women’s pairs badminton last year, both apologised to fans and pledged to play their best in future matches.
The scandal has been one of the most talked-about subjects on China’s Twitter-like microblogs this week, with many fans calling it a “humiliation” for the national team.
Many responded to Yu’s shock announcement with support and sympathy, although some remained critical.
“Go Yu Yang, never give up!” wrote a user called Zhao Yin. ”This is not your fault, we all understand,” said another using the handle “Water World”.
But another disagreed: “Yu Yang, this is what you deserve, please do not insult the Badminton World Federation or the noble sport of badminton.”
The Olympic match-throwing scandal also saw the Badminton World Federation disqualify two South Korean pairs and one Indonesian duo for trying to lose their first-round games.
The players involved were charged with “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 country’s head badminton coach Li Yongbo said he should take the blame for the incident, which Chinese state media said “violates the Olympic spirit of fair competition.”
“As head coach, I owe the supporters of Chinese badminton and the Chinese TV audiences an apology,” the Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying in London Wednesday.
“Chinese players failed to demonstrate the fine tradition and fighting spirit of the national team. It’s me to blame.”
Yu’s announcement came after the Badminton World Federation announced that the disqualified athletes could continue to compete in future tournaments.
London Olympics chairman Sebastian Coe described the scandal as “unacceptable”.
She got what she deserved. I’ve no sympathy for cheats.
The fault lies with the organisers combining qualification groups with a system of seeding. This outcome was inevitable. You cannot blame competitors for doing whatever they can, within the laws of their sport, to gain a medal.
This situation could easily have been avoided by having a simple, seeded, knockout competition, or having a random draw after the qualification stage.
These world class competitors have been treated appallingly.
Not really within the laws if they aren’t trying!!
They knew the rules before the tournament and agreed to play to them. Then they tried to manipulate their draw by losing.
Backing these is like backing the Quinn family!!
Shut up with your Quinn talk. It was a stupid system to have where it would benefit players to lose and it was asking for trouble.
Jaysus, imagine it happened in a sport that wasn’t shiite!
Basically rules Soccer out then doesn’t it. Bunch of diving little bitches. There’s a group of overpaid morons Not Trying every week.
I’m sure people have seen this but interesting how Drogba moves to china then they win gold in the Diving!!
good point bill murray
You’d have to wonder if they were ordered to do it; in which case the problem’s a lot nastier than it looks and a simple ban for the athletes won’t fix things :(
LYB has a history of “convenient” match results (usually between CHN players though), but the naivety of doing this kind of match rigging so blatantly in the sport’s biggest competition is kind of amusing.
The new Olympic ideal. It’s not the winning that counts, it’s the taking apart of the games.
we’ve seen this before… even in football.. back in Italia 90 & euro 88 for example you could clearly see teams agreeing not to score so they both qualify etc…. play out a 0-0 by knocking it about the pitch…
One slight difference – a point would be of benefit to both teams where losing would have eliminated either team.
These players were trying to lose on purpose.
same thing… they are fudging a result to gain a favourable outcome to the draw in the next round….
Yes but they weren’t trying to lose to get knocked out or for gambling. They were aiming to get an easier run at the gold. It was a tactical decision.
Whilst I could never condone the players for the farce/charade/disgrace they were involved in (particularly given the price of tickets for the event), the overall system has to be wrong when players have an incentive to throw a match….
They knew the competition format well in advance. If they didn’t agree with it, they should have either done something about it earlier or just not competed. I guess they went with the second option.
Chinese athletes don’t get to say what they think. Whatever comes out of her mouth she is told to say. The simplest way would be no seeding, straight forward draw and knockout competition.
She didnt look too great in any ways. Terrible service! Well that’s the second time in a week that she quit the sport.
Well done to the IBF, they had the guts to disqualify some of the top cheating players. Now if only the other sports would follow their lead.
Imagine FIFA banning Ronald’s for diving or real Madrid for getting their players to be sent off deliberately, or the motor sport crowd for all the car fixing that goes on etc.
It just shows that tv and money talks, badminton is relatively untainted in terms of corporate interference. The can not be said of soccer, motor sport, American football and suck like
Some typos are funny.
If they couldn’t even be bothered to pretend that they were trying then they deserve to get sent home.
No sympathy for her.
People pay money to see competition that is genuine – not a fixed game!
She and the rest deserve what they got!
In fairness to the IBF they were trying to make the earlier stages of the competition better for the weaker pairs by introducing the round-robin system.
With a straight knockout system you can end up being out of the Games after just one match. This system was introduced to give teams more than one game. It’s unfortunate that the knock on effect was to end up with games where teams were incentivised to lose.
I’m not sure though how they could tweak the format to keep the group stage but somehow prevent this situation from happening
oh well doesnt it sound stupid if you compete your ass off in this game to win then you have to face the second seed in the next round knockoff game??wats more for the chinese pair they will face the one from the same league…
I do feel sorry for the audience spent loads of money to watch it stupid clown show but if all the for pairs in the game were acting like this, I am sure there are more to blame for the stupid rules rather than those players.
Yu who! wont be missed the cheek thinking they could get away with that crap, and with the whole world looking, indeed she should leave the sport after bringing disgrace ,
them’s HEs, them are