A disciplinary hearing began Wednesday to investigate eight women badminton players, including the reigning world champions from China, charged with trying to throw their matches at the London Olympics to secure a favourable draw.
The Badminton World Federation said in a statement it had charged the doubles players from China, South Korea and Indonesia under its players' code of conduct 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" in matches Tuesday night."China has been doing this so many times and they never get sanctioned by the BWF," Thohir said. "On the first game yesterday when China did it, the BWF didn't do anything. If the BWF do something on the first game and they say you are disqualified, it is a warning for everyone."
IOC vice president Craig Reedie, the former head of the international badminton federation, welcomed the decision.
"Sport is competitive," Reedie told the AP. "If you lose the competitive element, then the whole thing becomes a nonsense.
"You cannot allow a player to abuse the tournament like that, and not take firm action. So good on them."
The eight disqualified players are world doubles champions Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang of China and their South Korean opponents Jung Kyun-eun and Kim Ha-na, along with South Korea's Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung and Indonesia's Meiliana Jauhari and Greysia Polii.Petya Nedelcheva, the Bulgarian women's singles 15th seed, who was playing on an adjacent court at the time of the first incident, was forthright in her general criticism of China. "China control everything," she said. "I don't know who controlled the match to lose, but if it is China again … They did it so many times last year, they didn't play against each other in 20 matches. They do what they want."
The online magazine Badzine published figures in December last year showing that of the 99 all-Chinese matches played in major tournaments in 2011, 20 were walkovers or ended in a retirement.
Emms said that the potential for spot-fixing was raised in a manager's meeting on Monday but that the referee had dismissed their concerns. "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.
No comments:
Post a Comment