I see nothing wrong with that. They are playing the game. If they can manipulate knockout bracket during pool play, there's a problem with how they draw the pools. Besides, it's not like the Olympic committee never commits unsportsmanlike results. Bribery and manipulation never happens.
Some of these posts are hilarious regarding Phelps. He's not dominating like last Olympics but lets not act like he sucks. He's clearly still incredibly good.
I think people are secretly hoping for a Phelps vs Ye Shiwen match race. Of course Ye will have to give Phelps a 5 second head start due to the advanced training techniques and excellent coaching she receives.
I dont think anyone has said he sucks... Hes got a gold, 2 silvers and a 4th so far in 4 events... Pretty sick if you ask me (but obviously not as sick as 08).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/201...badminton-disqualified-olympics?newsfeed=true London 2012: Eight badminton players 'disqualified for throwing games' ‧ Players reportedly sent home after farcical matches ‧ All were charged with 'behaviour abusive to the sport' guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 August 2012 13.08 BST Eight badminton players at the London Olympics have been disqualified after being charged with trying to throw their matches, according to reports. The extraordinary move follows farcical scenes that led to competitors being booed by the crowd and threatened with disqualification by the referee. All four pairs of female doubles players had already qualified for the next round and appeared to be trying to manipulate which team they would have to face in the quarter-finals. The Badminton World Federation said early on Wednesday it had charged the players, from China, South Korea and Indonesia, 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". Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, the Chinese top seeds, and their South Korean rivals, Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na, were booed by spectators on Tuesday as the players repeatedly hit shots wide or served into the net. The referee, Thorsten Berg, warned the players over their conduct. The other match also involved a South Korean pair, Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung, up against the Indonesians Meiliana Juahari and Greysia Polii. The Koreans eventually won by two sets to one. The matches prompted Gail Emms, the former British badminton star, to call for the players to be disqualified, branding their apparent behaviour "disgraceful". "If badminton wants to save face I personally feel they should disqualify the four pairs and re-instate the pairs who came third and fourth in the group and then have a better competition," Emms told BBC Radio 5 Five Live. "You cannot do this in an Olympic Games, this is something that is not acceptable and it just makes not only our sport but the organisers and the poor crowd who had to watch, who pay good money to watch two matches … it was just disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful. I would disqualify them."
tanking at the olympics!, they should have done this to the bobcats as well, I'm pretty sure this has been done a number of times to avoid unfaborable brackets, but i guess both skor and china took tanking to another level
Talk about stupidity. If you want to throw the game, at least make it not so obvious, unless both side wants to throw the game.
The badminton players were just serving right into the net. Just awful and comical. So dumb to reward the bad teams. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19072677
The career of those two Chinese players is coming to an end...... They have every right to play the game their way for their own benefit. no?
It sounds like both sides were trying to throw the game so it was a race to the bottom. I have mixed feelings about this. I agree this wasn't in the spirit of the Olympics and competition but at the same time the teams were trying to play within the rules in regard to getting a better draw. For that matter there are several situations where an athlete or team deliberately may not give there best for a variety of reasons, such as because of injury or saving their strength for later. If these badmiton players are penalized for not giving their all should then relay teams be penalized for not running their best players in earlier heats or for holding back in earlier heats?
It's actually incredible how good Phelps still is when you can clearly see he hasnt trained nearly as hard as he did for the 08 Olympics. The guy has accomplished all he can in the sport, so I dont blame him for taking it easy and just enjoying the moment. A greedy part of me, however, just wants to see him dominate one last time tho......
aside from debate about right and wrong and exactly who was right or wrong or more wrong or the first one to be wrong, etc........imo all the olympic athletes participating have worked years to get there, with limited windows for their careers -- so outright disqualification should not be levied so lightly before at least some sort of penalty/warning was issued first...
kind of how I feel. I want to see possibly the best swimmer in our lifetime go 100%..I want to see him crush world records...i want to see him dominate...you just want to see the great ones be great. It seems painfully obvious he's coasting this Olympics, which is crazy because he can coast to golds and silvers.
Ye Shiwen isn't the first woman to beat Ryan Lochte's time in the last 50m of his 400m individual medley. British swimmer Rebecca Adlington did it too last year: http://www.dermothunt.com/blog/?p=178 The amazing thing is that Adlington had the energy to do it at the end of an 800m race, whereas Lochte only went 400 meters.
Women may actually have an advantage in the pool, because most of them can float without expending energy.
