China's alleged Badminton match/age fixing

[heywoodu 15,174]

I'm curious to see how they'll do at the London Olympics!

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Just now, heywoodu said:

I'm curious to see how they'll do at the London Olympics!

 

China won 5 gold medals for MS, WS, MD, WD and XD at 2012 London Olympics.

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Evidence of 'arranged' results between Chinese shuttlers

All the rumourmongering about the Chinese seems to have basis in fact. Popular badminton website Badzine.net has analysed the statistics of China versus China matches this year and concluded that an astonishing 20 per cent of matches is not completed — that is, players have either not taken to the court, or retired midway citing injury or health problems. This essentially means that, apart from letting down ticket-purchasing spectators, Chinese players get an unfair advantage while progressing in the tournament.

This is probably the most damning indication of the Chinese playing the game in poor spirit. Until now, nobody had taken the trouble to analyse past matches and make a strong case. Teams have mostly levelled allegations but the Chinese haven’t bothered to defend themselves, secure in the knowledge that nobody would have foolproof evidence or the political will to take them on.

While the Chinese are the super heavyweights of world badminton, with no equals in sight, they don’t have too many friends on the circuit. Apart from their general aloofness, what has irked other nations consistently is the record of China versus China matches.

It is commonly believed on the circuit that most of these matches are decided beforehand by the team management, particularly chief coach Li Yongbo. There is little the international community or the Badminton World Federation (BWF) can do about this, for such suspicions are not provable. But ‘pre-decided’ matches can be galling to viewers, especially if they have paid good money for tickets and are looking forward to a good day’s contest.

Evidence has mostly been circumstantial. I recall the 2008 All England final between Lin Dan and Chen Jin in which Lin Dan mysteriously developed a knee problem halfway through the second game and went on to lose the match — but apparently the knee healed within a week, for he won the Swiss Open! Everybody in the media believed that Lin Dan had ‘thrown’ that match to enable Chen Jin to garner enough ranking points for the Beijing Olympics.

Li Yongbo himself admitted in an interview to Chinese website Sina.com in 2008 that the Athens Olympics (2004) women’s singles semifinal, between Chinese players Zhang Ning and Zhou Mi, was allowed to go Zhang Ning’s way after she won the first game. Zhou Mi was instructed not to work too hard, so that Zhang could go fresh into the final. Zhang did win the gold, against Mia Audina of Indonesia.

Yongbo’s admission created plenty of heat and dust, with the Badminton Players Federation calling for a ban on Chinese players, but the international federation hasn’t been able to do much.

Most recently, at the French Open Superseries in October, Lin Dan and compatriot Chen Longplayed such a tame opening game that the audience booed at them. The Badminton World Federation had announced some measures in August, and promised that “if compelling evidence is found of any irregularities, the matter will be treated with the utmost gravity by the BWF and severe penalties will be imposed” but it is unclear how it can act, considering the kind of political clout China wields.

Badzine’s analysis of all the matches in 2010 threw up interesting results. It reports: “Chinese shuttlers met each other 99 times on the circuit this year, and 20 matches were either not played at all (11 walkovers) or played partially before one of the opponents retired (9 retirements). This shows that 20.20% of matches between Chinese shutters were not completed in 2011.” This was in contrast to 0.74% of incomplete matches between the Chinese and other nations.

In fact, just last week, a China vs China women’s doubles match, in the semifinals of the World Superseries Finals, resulted in a walkover. Indian fans will be interested to know that the Wang Yihan-Wang Xin semifinal match ended in straight games for Yihan, who went on to play Saina Nehwal in the final. The complexion of the final would doubtless have changed if Yihan had been stretched in a long three-game match.

‘Pre-arranged’ results in badminton is no less a crime than doping or match-fixing, for it devalues the contest. It will be interesting to see how BWF reacts to Badzine’s report.

[Dunadan 1,103]

Just now, up and down said:

 

China won 5 gold medals for MS, WS, MD, WD and XD at 2012 London Olympics.

 

How do you know the future? Are you involved in the match fixing scheme?

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by Dunadan

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Ye Zhaoying wrote on the social network: The first time I saw a boy with a racket in a street by chance, he came up and asked all kinds of questions, then he had the desire to pick up the racket again. When he came to the club, he found that there were people playing in the club from childhood to old age. Because of the limitation of the venue and time, the club could only be full. The demand for more than 100 people is quite unexpected, because the club is still a Spanish team. How many times can life be crazy? On September 8, 2018, after 18 years of training, I picked up my favorite racket again and fought with boys and girls half my age. It was like a dream that I was back on the court again. It was something I had never dreamed of before. How many times could life be mad for me? I want to go crazy for it again. PS: I still have room for improvement, today I won a regrettable Club total points lost, looking forward to the next game.

 

 

Born in 1974, Ye Zhaoying had long held the No. 1 position in the world in badminton womens singles. In her career, she won the Uber Cup three times for China, the Sudiman Cup twice, and the World Championships singles twice. But in her career, she failed to win the Olympic championship. Sydney Olympic Games The ball incident was also bubbling with excitement.

Gong Zhichao and Ye Zhaoying won the gold medals and bronze medals in the Sydney Olympic Games.

 

Ye Zhaoying and Gong Zhichao, two Chinese players, played together in the womens singles semifinal in Sydney in 2000, eventually lost the chance to attack the gold medal. In the past, in the two sides of the duel, Gong Zhichao has rarely won. Whether the result of the match was arranged ahead of schedule was once a hot topic of media attention. Later, Li Yongbo personally admitted to let the ball: But in China, our ultimate goal is the national interest, we finally made a decision to mobilize Ye Zhaoying to let the ball. Li Yongbo said, I tell Ye Zhaoying, you two play semi-finals, you must be exhausted, no matter who wins, the next days final is a consumption, there is no need to consume the ball. We promise that if Gong Zhichao wins, give Ye Zhaoying the same treatment and Olympic champions treatment. Indeed, it was very difficult for every player to accept the ball. At that time, Ye Zhaoying cried and refused to give up. Finally, she cried and said that she respected the teams choice.

 

Ye Zhaoying and Gong Zhichao, two Chinese players, played together in the womens singles semifinal in Sydney in 2000, eventually lost the chance to attack the gold medal. In the past, in the two sides of the duel, Gong Zhichao has rarely won. Whether the result of the match was arranged ahead of schedule was once a hot topic of media attention. Later, Li Yongbo personally admitted to let the ball: But in China, our ultimate goal is the national interest, we finally made a decision to mobilize Ye Zhaoying to let the ball. Li Yongbo said, I tell Ye Zhaoying, you two play semi-finals, you must be exhausted, no matter who wins, the next days final is a consumption, there is no need to consume the ball. We promise that if Gong Zhichao wins, give Ye Zhaoying the same treatment and Olympic champions treatment. Indeed, it was very difficult for every player to accept the ball. At that time, Ye Zhaoying cried and refused to give up. Finally, she cried and said that she respected the teams choice.

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China Coach Admits to Fixing Olympic Match

 

It is one of the worst kept secrets in international badminton. Actually, it applies to many sports. When China have more than one world-class athlete in the same sport, you can expect some unusual results.

According to an AFP article recently, China's badminton head coach, Li Yongbo, has admitted ordering a player to throw a crucial match during the 2004 Olympic Games. Li told China Central Television's sports channel that the semi-final women's singles between Zhou Mi and Zhang Ning was fixed so that China could improve their gold medal chances. The coaching staff had decided, after watching the first game, that Zhang would have a better chance at winning the final against a non-Chinese player instead of Zhou. He was quoted as saying: "After the first game, Zhang looked in better all round shape. So we told Zhou Mi not to work too hard and let Zhang into the final." Badminton is not the only sport where China is suspected of telling their players to throw matches. Table tennis is another one. For many years, spectators, other coaches and players frequently observed some Chinese players suddenly refuse to try against compatriots in key matches of important tournaments. Sometimes it is to give the player who is in good form a better chance of winning a title and other times, if the final itself is between two Chinese players, it is to give new blood a taste of glory. This may be frowned upon in most countries but Li said China had nothing to be ashamed about. It was an act of patriotism. "It shows our patriotism and in fact I am proud of it." Zhang went on to win the gold medal in Athens and she is expected to defend her title at the Beijing Olympic Games in August. Zhou, however, quit the Chinese team and went to Hong Kong and wants to represent the former British colony at the Beijing tournament. If Zhou and Zhang meet again, don't look for revenge though. There are often "secret" deals between China and their ex-players, especially the ones who immigrate to Chinese territory's Hong Kong and Macau. Media in those countries say there is an unwritten law that players who have left China are not allowed to beat their mainland counterparts for a certain number of years, especially in big tournaments such as Olympics and world championships.

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Match fixing in China is never ending. There are more than thousands and even millions of articles about how China system fixed up matches under the order of Li Yongbo who is also the head coach for 24 years in China badminton. Anyway I think I will not post all the articles here. There are way too many articles. I just post some of them here only. 

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The national association for badminton in Denmark says the sport's world federation should punish Chinese players for a match at last week's Fuzhou China Open which has been described as a “farce”.

Bo Jensen, director of Badminton Denmark, wants the Badminton World Federation (BWF) to take action after seeing footage of a quarter final match in which He Jiting and Ta Qiang defeated Li Junhui and Liu Yuchen in three sets.

“I am giving my support to the criticism. This is cheating, it's match-fixing and we can't accept it,” Jensen said to TV2 Sport.

“In our context, this is just as bad as doping, and it must be punished because if it is not, we will damage the sport's reputation amongst fans and the many sponsors that are making huge investments at the moment,” he added.

Several Danish badminton players are reported to have been present during the match. Doubles pair Mads Pieler Kolding and Mads Conrad-Petersen lodged a complaint with tournament organisers following the match about the way it had been played.

Another player, Hans-Kristian Vittinghus, later posted an update on Facebook in which he compared the match to a scandal during the 2012 Olympic Games in London, when eight players from China, South Korea and Indonesia were disqualified for deliberately trying to lose.

“This was a complete farce of a match which made me think of the London Olympics when 4 pairs deliberately tried to lose their matches. I kid you not, it was this bad,” Vittinghus wrote, citing errors in play that “just (don't) happen at this level”.

“Difficult to get hard evidence, but if you have watched a bare minimum of world class badminton, you'd know what just happened,” he also wrote.

The BWF told TV2 Sport that it would not comment on the issue prior to receiving a report from the tournament's organisers.

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Badminton match-fixing scandal: how and why the four pairs were disqualified from the London 2012 Olympics

With four badminton pairs sensationally disqualified from the Olympic Games for deliberately throwing their matches, Telegraph Sport looks at how and why the situation arose.

 

 

 

So how come spectators were forced into watching a farcical set of matches?

Badminton chiefs introduced a preliminary pool round for this Olympicsafter starting the tournament with knockout rounds in previous Olympiads. It was clear then that there could be a myriad of problems. Sure enough they arose in the women's doubles on Tuesday evening after China's world champion duo and pairs from South Korea and Indonesia purposely lost points in their final group matches to earn a favourable draw in the last 16.

Are there previous incidents of players clearly throwing matches?

Not half. Speak to players and officials and they will tell you of a spate of incidents each year on the world tour. As far as the Olympics go, the highest-profile case remains Athens 2004 when Li Yongbo, China’s head coach, admitted to ordering a player to throw a tie, improving chances of gold. It occurred during the women’s singles semi-final when Li decided that Zhang Ning would have a better shot at winning the final against a non-Chinese opponent rather than her opponent Zhou Mi.

So it is more prevalent with all-Chinese encounters?

 

Statistics – compiled by the online magazine Badzine – for all major tournaments in 2011 revealed that walkovers and uncompleted matches were commonplace. Chinese shuttlers, favourites to sweep all five golds at these Games, met each other 99 times on the circuit in 2011. Of those, 20 matches were either not played (11 walkovers) or partially completed before one of the opponents retired. When Chinese met other nations, the percentage of withdrawals dropped to 0.21 per cent.

Can we call it match-fixing?

China will tell you differently, but four years after the Athens debacle, Li said it "showed our patriotism and in fact I am proud of it”. In the Olympics, only two entries from each nation can compete. China’s dominance outside of the Olympics means that the latter stages of Super Series events are filled with their players and more of a chance of manipulating matches. The problem with group-stage matches is that the teams believe they are exploiting a loophole in the system of keeping players fresh, rather than fixing matches for betting purposes.

What do the players think about the debacle?

Chris Adcock, Britain’s doubles’ specialist, told Telegraph Sport in February that it was “frustrating” to see so many games “clearly thrown”. Adcock alluded to one particular match at last year’s World Championship semi-final involving two Chinese pairs, which failed to go the distance. Adcock and his partner Imogen Bankier reached the final but looked tired. Not surprisingly their 'fresher' Chinese rivals won gold.

What is being done about the whole issue?

Before the Wembley furore, world badminton chiefs said they were continuing to monitor same-country matches after a number of complaints from federations. The crux was that no official explanations were given as to particular withdrawals, while there was no independent doctor to assess injuries. The Badminton World Federation said in August that it would impose “severe penalties”, but up until now none had been imposed.

 

 

[heywoodu 15,174]

One thing that would help is a link to the article and something like a date  I mean, several articles you post are literally years old (one today was more than 7 years old), it would be nice to know which ones are 'news' and which ones are just old stuff