03/08/2012
Indonesia has called for a review of this year’s Olympic badminton format after the country’s hopes for Olympic glory were damaged after the Badminton World Federation decided to toss a pair of its female doubles players from the competition.
The Indonesians were among four females doubles pairs disqualified from the 2012 Games on Wednesday for trying to lose their pool play match so they could face an easier opponent in the quarterfinals.
The teams – two from South Korea and one each from China and Indonesia – were punished for “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.”
All four pairs had already qualified for the quarterfinals, but had to finish pool play to determine seeding for the elimination bracket. None wanted to play the second-ranked Chinese female doubles team any sooner in the elimination round than they had too.
Greysia Polii and Meilana Jauhari, the Indonesian pair, admitted to throwing their game against South Korea on Wednesday. Some Indonesian shuttlers said "tanking," as it's known, has become common in the game, because of the structure of badminton tournaments.
“I think we must blame the system because it allows the players to do this,” says Alan Budikusumo, a former Olympic champion who won gold in the men’s singles at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He says the players were wrong but that he understands the pressure placed on them to win medals in a sport second only in popularity to soccer here.
Fading game
Badminton is Indonesia's national sport, and the only one it consistently brings home Olympic medals for. The country has won gold for badminton in every Olympic games since the sport was first introduced on 1992.
Although Polii and Jauhari were not among the country's top-ranked players, their ousting reduces Indonesia’s chances of medaling in badminton, particularly after past champion Taufik Hidayat bowed out following a loss to China’s Lin Dan in the men’s singles.
Some say their disqualification is also likely to heap some shame on a sport that already faces waning public and government support. “This is very bad for us,” says Budikusumo. “We must do much better than this to develop better than before.”
When he returned from the 1992 Olympic games, medal in hand, Budikusumo was paraded around town and feted as a national hero. Today young players have fewer incentives to take up the sport, he says.
Unlike other countries, where Olympians receive big cash prizes from their governments, Indonesian athletes are often left to fend for themselves, says Budikusumo. Without the right sweeteners, fewer people are taking up the game.
Officials here admit that the country has put more money and resources into preparing athletes for regional competitions, such as the Southeast Asian Games, which involves a host of non-Olympic sports including petanque and pencak silat, an Indonesian martial art.
With prospects for a future after the Olympics fairly low, some badminton champs have gone on to try their luck in other countries. Former gold-medal champion Tony Gunawan moved to the United States and started training young players there.Despite his age, 37, he partnered with Howard Bach for the US badminton men’s doubles. The team crashed early in the Games, doing little to meet Gunawan’s hopes of stoking more global interest in badminton.
Tanking common
Match throwing is nothing new to badminton, which has created its share of controversies during its 20 year Olympic run. Heated internal politics have drawn quiet warnings in the past from the International Olympic Committee, according to AFP.
This year the Olympics moved away from a straight knock-out system to a pool play round for qualification for the elimination bracket. The approach creates perverse incentives for players, since in certain circumstances their chances of winning a medal improves if they throw a pool play match. Basically, the disqualified players have been punished for using a little game theory.
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