Olympic Badmitton Controversy (and other Olympic Controversies)

Some athletes get 10-15 seconds of glory in a heat in track and field and then their campaign is over. One poor bugger in the 110 hurdles i think, false started and it was over for him before it even began.

Point being, badminton players may get an hour or two to play in a match, while other sports go through a knockout system that gives them one race that is over within seconds.

I understand that its great to get some time out there and play the pool, but its much easier to manage the sort of behaviour that they want to avoid by introducing knockouts. I can understand also how quickly a competition can wither down within just a few matches, but if that was the case, they could consider having multiple teams from each country compete.

Yohan Blake almost missed out making the finals in the mens 200m when he slowed down at the line and almost got pipped by the two guys coming through (he won by 0.02 seconds). The two fastest times go through the heats to the finals. Had he come third, there was no guarantee that he'd make the semi's. (in his case his time was fast enough that he would have made the semi's because his times were fast enough).

Of course though, TV networks need to make more money by having more games played in pools rather than knockouts.
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i think their olympic comittees would be having a nice cold one too

 

Good point and true. Since this are the Olympics where the competitors are supposedly the worlds best players the time savings with having single elimination tournaments bear a huge weight in organizing the games.

 

I think what gets people is there is no consistency.

Take football (or NFL where the same thing happens) When a team has already qualified for playoffs in NFL (or in the League Cup in soccer for at least 10 teams at top and bottom of Prem) the teams basically give up. The players dont go out and lose on purpose, but the coach/manager delibaretly picks a weak team, and people play well within themselves.

Top runners in the heats dont run as hard as they can.

_

What let these badminton players down was probably just how obvious they were. They could have gone 95% and lost, not been completely blatant in not trying.

 

I'm putting this here because it seems like the best place. If it deserves its own thread, we can split it off.

So what was arguably the best counterpoint to the badminton players was Oscar Pistorius, the "Blade Runner". As a reminder, he is the guy with no legs who ran the 400M and the 4x400M relay for South Africa. And today, it looks like he's going to be charged with murder:

Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius involved in shooting at home, woman dead - ESPN

Wow.

 

from what i recall of his past, he's a sore loser with a bad temper.

But i have no idea why he's shoot something so beautiful. crying shame.