tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8560894381298667267.post6373117089899846704..comments2023-10-25T00:48:14.046-07:00Comments on The Buchanan Ontario Workplace Law Blog: The realities of Sport: The only win is the fair winUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8560894381298667267.post-17462364752172305492012-08-01T12:05:49.072-07:002012-08-01T12:05:49.072-07:00The last day has seen a huge controversy arise in ...The last day has seen a huge controversy arise in badminton, as well, including several disqualifications, but for a rather different reason.<br /><br />This year, Olympic Badminton used a 'round robin' format for the first round. In Ladies' Doubles, the round robin was a round of 16, with four groups of four, and the top two from each group were to advance to the quarter-final, in a manner determined by their wins and scores from the round robin.<br /><br />Which is all well and good, except that it happened in both Groups A and Group C that, by the time the top two teams played each other, they had already both secured a place in the quarter-final. So why expend a lot of energy trying to win?<br /><br />But this went a step further. The Danish team had upset the second-seeded Chinese team in Group D, which changed the seeding for the quarters and semis, meaning that, if the Chinese team from Group A went in undefeated, they would face their compatriots in the semis rather than the finals (ie - they couldn't take both gold and silver). So they figured it was better to lose. This snowballed, and at the end of the day all four teams - including the reigning world champion Chinese team, the Indonesians, and both teams from South Korea - were actually doing their best to lose.<br /><br />It was obvious - repeatedly serving or returning into the net, intentionally hitting it well out - to the point that the crowd was booing and jeering and the officials came out to warn them.<br /><br />It was a scandal. It was unsportsmanlike. It was a real disappointment for the crowd - at least wrestlers put on a show.<br /><br />And it involved a startling lack of foresight, because neither the IOC nor the Badminton World Federation could simply ignore it. So all 8 players were disqualified.<br /><br />It's a different type of corruption, and in some ways draws a harsher reaction, because it actually hurts the business of the sport. Though some are arguing, and not without reason, that the format itself is flawed - where you can do better by losing, that's a formatting error. True. But it doesn't excuse the truly shameful display of these so-called athletes.<br /><br />Incidentally, a side effect of this scandal is that the disqualifications meant that all four of the otherwise-eliminated teams from Groups A and C advanced to the quarters, including Canadians Alex Bruce and Michelle Li, who are from the GTA. And they just managed to defeat the Australians in a nail-biter of a quarter-final, which makes them, I believe, the first Canadians ever to make an Olympic Badminton semi-final.Dennis Buchananhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02338198640943823828noreply@blogger.com