2012 Summer OlympicsVideo

This Is How Badly You Have To Play Badminton To Get Kicked Out Of The Olympics

So you know eight female badminton players got kicked out of the Olympics for trying to lose matches. You know their appeals got either rejected outright or withdrawn before they could be. But did you know exactly how bad the play of the disqualified players was to begin with?

Well, now we know. If you didn’t happen to see the original matches in question, some video of them now exists online. And… yeah, there is no way any Olympic badminton players could be this bad, even on their absolute worst days. A taste of just how comically awful they were is below, and a longer, non-horribly-watermarked version can be found here:

Yeah, the system in place (round robin followed by knockout play; the tankers were apparently trying to lose to get a more favorable matchup later) gave them incentive to do it, but that is just terrible. They look like I used to during my “badminton mental block” phase (a famous phase in certain Spotswood High School circles).

Even if the rules in place are stupid, though, if you try to game the system that obviously, you have to expect some backlash. Even so, hopefully the loudest message in all this will be sent to the Olympics themselves, and by 2016, we have a purely knockout-based badminton tournament. Because no one should have to sit through that.

[h/t smartfootball]

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