Eight Badminton Players Who Tried To Throw Games Disqualified From Olympics

A bizarre scene unfolded yesterday at Wembley Arena as badminton teams from China and South Korea both attempted to throw the match in order to attain a preferable elimination round seed and drew massive boos from the audience for playing roughly in the manner you or I would while drunk at a backyard barbecue.

Daily Telegraph reporter Paul Kelso reported this morning those teams, along with another Korean team and an Indonesian pair suspected of trying to lose on purpose, had been kicked out of the Olympics.

The Chinese team of Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang and South Koreans Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na played a farce of a match in which players served into the net on purpose or lazily launched shots out of bounds. The Chinese players' incentive to lose was a bracket placement that would keep them on the opposite side from the other top-ranked Chinese team, meaning they'd avoid facing them until the finals. The Koreans, having sensed the plot from Wang and Yu, attempted to lose themselves in response.

Those teams had already qualified for the elimination rounds and were simply playing for seeds.

The Guardian called it a " farce" while The Independent highlighted the change in format from a standard knockout tournament as being the reason such a disaster could happen in the first place.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.