Beijing: A top Chinese badminton star quit the sport on Thursday as an Olympic match-throwing scandal met with dismay and criticism in China, Indonesia and South Korea, from where eight players were disqualified.
The Badminton World Federation’s move to eject a Chinese, an Indonesian and two South Korean duos for failing to play their best, marked the first major scandal of the Games and prompted China’s Yu Yang to retire from the sport.
Sports fans and the media in all three countries expressed disappointment, with some saying it was humiliating to have their national players implicated in the scandal, while others were sympathetic to the athletes. “Match fixing tramples on sports ethics and shouldn’t be tolerated,” an opinion piece in China’s state-run Global Times said.
The paper was among several news outlets and many ordinary citizens from the Asian countries to suggest that the new round-robin format motivated players to lose, though most agreed that nothing excused match-throwing.
China roundly criticised the incident and, alone among the three countries, declined to appeal the decision to disqualify the athletes.
Its sports delegation urged Yu, her partner Wang Xiaoli and head badminton coach Li Yongbo to publicly apologise.
“Chinese players failed to demonstrate the fine tradition and fighting spirit of the national team. It’s me to blame,” Xinhua news agency quoted Li as saying.
His apology contrasted comments in April at the Asia Badminton Championships where he endorsed the strategy of holding back early in competitions to save energy for later rounds. “This is not a question of unfairness, there are certain rules that have been set, so everyone has to play within the rules,” Li said in the interview replayed today by Beijing Television.Shortly after her public apology, Yu announced on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog, that she planned to quit the sport. “This is my last time competing. Goodbye Badminton World Federation, goodbye my beloved badminton,” she posted.
