London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics - General discussion

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mattythedog
They haven't released the schedule yet, but its quite late in the competition, so we I might get some top players.
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Well, I've got Murray, then Serena Williams, then Del Potro (sp?) and then Murray in the mixed doubles. :D
 
CAM
And I feel horrible for that male gymnast from the Bronx that messed up, grabbed his pant leg on the horse thing. I had to change the channel, couldn't look him in the eye.
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I started watching the gymnastics just before that happened, clips of this?

Though I will say Kristian Thomas has been an utter beast throughout these games. He only messed up his vault, which he got perfect last time - on a 7 difficulty - and vault was the highest scoring, so that really cost him. But a 7th is certainly very great regardless.
 
BJBEOSmitty
Here is some VIDEO of the badminton players who purposefully tried to throw the match in an effort to manipulate the knockout draw.

Some of these shots are absolutely disgraceful and they were righfully booted from the games. Well done to the officials who made that decision and well done to the crowd who were ALL OVER THEM once it became clear what was going on.

What clowns.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/badminton/highlights-badminton-players-try-to-throw-match.html
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Please try to be less ignorant, thank you. Where is the rule that you must be good in the sport? Where? All teams involved were doing their best to win gold medals, and the rules of the tournament made them try to lose to have a better shot at the ultimate prize. Don't hate the players, hate the game.

These athletes had a lot riding on winning medals and the system forced them to try to lose to give themselves a better chance at winning in the long run. This sort of thing happens in many other sports. The people who disqualified these athletes have no right to judge what is ethically acceptable, they need to follow the rules of the game to the letter to ensure fair competition. Unfortunately, the ignorant public who were in the stands and watching on TV put pressure on the people in charge to DQ these athletes. When the public aren't having as much fun as they think they are entitled to, heads must roll. The Olympic badminton organizers are scapegoating these athletes for a poor system that they themselves created. The real truth is in a quote I read somewhere else, "The Olympics are entertaining. They are not entertainment."

This disgusting decision is terribly unfortunate and puts a stain on these London Olympics. 👎

And don't say well done to that crowd. Which seems more akin to ancient Romans in the Colosseum, begging for blood, than civilized people.
 
SagarisGTB
Please try to be less ignorant, thank you. Where is the rule that you must be good in the sport? Where?
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It was actually the Badminton World Federation that expelled the players and the rule is in Appendix 4 of the General Competitions Regulations - the Player Code of Conduct:

BWF GCR
On-site offences
4.5 Failure to use best efforts
Not using one’s best efforts to win a match.
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Please feel free to peruse the regulations. Next question?
 
mattythedog
Well, I've got Murray, then Serena Williams, then Del Potro (sp?) and then Murray in the mixed doubles. :D
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Wow..Murrays on twice today then!! though i s'pose you would to anything to win a medal!
 
With regards to the Badminton DQ's, not that i'm against the DQ's.. but wasn't the new structure of tournament partly to blame for the unsporting conduct?
 
At 1ness
With regards to the Badminton DQ's, not that i'm against the DQ's.. but wasn't the new structure of tournament partly to blame for the unsporting conduct?
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Yeah i think so..its a round-robin tournament and not a straight knock-out that the players are used to..
 
At 1ness
With regards to the Badminton DQ's, not that i'm against the DQ's.. but wasn't the new structure of tournament partly to blame for the unsporting conduct?
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Any tournament where a round robin leads to seedings for knockout stages is left open to what happened here, particularly when one of the higher ranked teams is beaten in an upset, as was the case with one of the chinese pairs. From what I can work out, badminton (the Chinese in particular) is quite bad for maipulating results. It was stated in one of the news articles I read when this story first broke yesterday.
 
At 1ness
With regards to the Badminton DQ's, not that i'm against the DQ's.. but wasn't the new structure of tournament partly to blame for the unsporting conduct?
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No.

The structure is exactly what we've seen in football tournaments for 40 years. Four groups of four, top two teams from each group qualify and play-off in knockout rounds, like so:

Group A
A1 A2 A3 A4

Group B
B1 B2 B3 B4

Group C
C1 C2 C3 C4

Group D
D1 D2 D3 D4

Quarter-finals
QF1 - A1 vs C2
QF2 - B1 vs D2
QF3 - C1 vs A2
QF4 - D1 vs B2

Semi-finals
SF1 - QF1 winner vs QF2 winner
SF2 - QF3 winner vs QF4 winner

Bronze medal match
SF1 loser vs SF2 loser

Final
SF1 winner vs SF2 winner


The problem here was that the groups A & C had a Chinese top ranked pair (world #1) and a South Korean top ranked pair (world #3) along with another South Korean pair.

Knowing the other South Korean pair would be likely to lose the match and face the top ranked South Korean pair in the QF3 match (C1 vs A2) - limiting the number of possible medals for South Korea by eliminating a pair before the Semi-finals - the top ranked South Korean pair didn't want to win. Knowing that they didn't want to win, the Chinese pair didn't want to win because they'd end up facing them (A1 vs C2). The other South Korean pair would then end up winning and facing the top ranked pair (A1 vs C2) so didn't want to win and the fourth pair - the Indonesians - would end up winning and playing the world #1 Chinese team (C1 vs A2).
 
Oh, okay cheers guys for shedding some light on the subject. 👍
 
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MUSC4EVER
Wow..Murrays on twice today then!! though i s'pose you would to anything to win a medal!
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Well, unsurprisingly it's raining. :rolleyes::lol: Matches start at 12:30, got a long wait...
 
Phelps goes from last at 50m to first at the end of his 100m fly heat, looked pretty comfortable to me. Though suspect Lochte will get 200 medley tonight.
 
WOW! What a rowing race in the lightweight coxless four. Too bad Australia didn't get a medal, but I think they top 4 was split by just a second or something.
 
That90sGuy
WOW! What a rowing race in the lightweight coxless four. Too bad Australia didn't get a medal, but I think they top 4 was split by just a second or something.
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1 South Africa : 6:02.84
2 Great Britain : 6:03.09
3 Denmark : 6:03.16

That was how close it was for medals too, great race, shame GB didn't quite grab it.
 
That was one hellova race!!!!:O:eek:
 
SagarisGTB
Please try to be less ignorant, thank you. Where is the rule that you must be good in the sport? Where? All teams involved were doing their best to win gold medals, and the rules of the tournament made them try to lose to have a better shot at the ultimate prize. Don't hate the players, hate the game.

These athletes had a lot riding on winning medals and the system forced them to try to lose to give themselves a better chance at winning in the long run. This sort of thing happens in many other sports. The people who disqualified these athletes have no right to judge what is ethically acceptable, they need to follow the rules of the game to the letter to ensure fair competition. Unfortunately, the ignorant public who were in the stands and watching on TV put pressure on the people in charge to DQ these athletes. When the public aren't having as much fun as they think they are entitled to, heads must roll. The Olympic badminton organizers are scapegoating these athletes for a poor system that they themselves created. The real truth is in a quote I read somewhere else, "The Olympics are entertaining. They are not entertainment."

This disgusting decision is terribly unfortunate and puts a stain on these London Olympics. 👎

And don't say well done to that crowd. Which seems more akin to ancient Romans in the Colosseum, begging for blood, than civilized people.
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The above has about as much quality as the dozens of serves hit straight into the net (when they normally do that ZERO times in a match) by the athletes who have been (rightly, correctly and within the rules well known to the players) bounced from the games.

Well done, calling others ignorant and in a post riddled with errors?

Are you a Chinese badminton player? I didnt know they had GT5 there. Welcome anyway, thanks for the swing and a miss insult. Would you like a free Level 23 ticket?

Roman Collisseum begging for blood? That's ridiculous. The crowd apparently knows more about the proper spirit and importance of the Olympic games than these stained athletes did, and I salute the crowd again.


This type of match fixing is pretty much gone from football, after the Germany Austria game at World Cup 1982. Now, the final group games are played simultaneously.

We're the thrown badminton matches played simultaneously? Perhaps the match official should have warned the athletes six or seven times instead of two, to appease those who think this was bloody or something?

Wait, it was bloody!!! A bloody disgrace.
 
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mattythedog
Well, I've got Murray, then Serena Williams, then Del Potro (sp?) and then Murray in the mixed doubles. :D
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Lucky!!

Serena vs Wozniacki is going to be phenomenal. Its is the essence of Offense(Serena) vs Defense(Caroline)

Watch out for Delpo! Forehand will take your head off!
 
Potential medals in the canoe slalom, judo and shooting. :)
 
SilverArrow
👍 Forgot cycling was on later too. :lol:
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I dont think anything is up for grabs in the cycling..as its only the heats..
 
Sorry for double post..but..we have got a finalist in the judo!!!!! :)
 
Well done!! Ogogo (75kg mens middleweight boxing), Lowestoft representing, he's a good friend of 1 of my old work colleagues. Good to see him win. 👍
 
mattythedog
Well, I've got Murray, then Serena Williams, then Del Potro (sp?) and then Murray in the mixed doubles. :D
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Blaze_409
Lucky!!

Serena vs Wozniacki is going to be phenomenal. Its is the essence of Offense(Serena) vs Defense(Caroline)

Watch out for Delpo! Forehand will take your head off!
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Well i was wrong. That was a beat down on Wozniacki....LOL
 
First of all, please excuse me for my grammatical errors, English is not my native language.

I disagree with the decision to DQ the badminton players, why? because in my opinion, those 8 players are already gone through to the next stage, logically, they already "win THE match" using their best efforts, and did not need to do anymore effort to win another (there's no point in winning another, they already gone through right?). Imagine this, in archery, or any other sport, when you already won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd set, the match is stopped, because we already got the clear winner. then why we need to force them to play the 4th and 5th set?

Now back to the badminton, of course that final match is to determine the group champion, but in the players' vision, what is more important? waste so much energy to win and be the group champion or to save energy, and go all out for the next bigger matches? I don't wanna be a hypocrite here, if I were the chinese, I would do the same, just play as fast as possible, not care for winning, and go back for nice rest for my body muscles to prepare for bigger match tomorrow.
I don't think this is cheating or disgrace, this is pure strategy. And trying to lose so that I don't have to defeat my own compatriot early is also a strategy (national strategy I must say?), and nothing wrong with that IMHO. I don't have problem with that at all. In fact, they were not really trying to lose, they have already won and gone through remember? they're just using the extra match to gain advantage by choosing the opponent, IMO it's smart, not cheating.

Now about the angry spectators, in my opinion it's their own fault in the first place for watching that match.. what do you expect from two teams that already gone through? nothing! of course.. that match didn't matter.

Actually, all of this is very normal to me, and I kinda surprised the officials took this very seriously.
 
Is that a gold in the shooting for team GB!?!?
 
I mean we see this in alot of sports where a player kind of throttle's back, though not in attempt to influence the draw. Motorsports(sandbagging), Tennis(a grand slam is 2 weeks long. You cant give it your all in the first match if your a top player), Swimming (Phelps wins some heats with 80% effort) Save his legs etc..

I don't see any issue with saving your energy but what these badminton players did was influencing the draw and played a horrible match . You can preserve your energy and play better than these guys did. the probably spent more energy just to throw the match...
 
1-2 for GB in the Canoe Slalom.:eek:
 
Lol yeah that was horrible, but if I were one of the spectators there, I would just laugh hard and take it as comedy. It's just too funny when two teams wanted to lose SO BAD in a tournament..

Of course the officials are embarassed because of this, thus the DQ.
But I say just change the format for the next olympics and this wouldn't have to happen again.
 
HOLY 🤬!!!! we are flying up that medal table now!!!!:dopey:
 
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