Olympic Badminton Scandal in London

August 3, 2012 | Sports

Badminton is a strange sport and for those of us in North America, it’s predominantly associated with kids at summer camp and drunks at the beach (not together).

The sport is undoubtedly a cabin favorite, typically after at least 7 beers and a drunken dare (See here, for a lengthy discussion on whether your dilapidated Lyme disease-addled log domicile is called a camp, cottage or cabin).

Its passage into the Olympics, is a a mystery only the most corrupt bribe-collecting IOC official can solve – or perhaps FIFA official, guys so corrupt they likely excel at corrupting completely unrelated sports.

A badminton projectile sounds like a Tourette’s outburst (also referred to less innocuously as a “birdie” around here) and the sport seems fit for rehab center rec rooms and the basements of prefab homes. Seeing it showcased at the Olympics is the kind of thing that would have most miming air quotations when “sport” is referenced alongside it.

Here, a ping pong table – much like a billiard table – serves as a convenient repository for hoarders to stash their junk and start an inferno. If it’s the national sport of China, we don’t see too many other countries lining up to knock them off the throne, revolutionizing the sport with a LeBron James-like prodigy. Besides, if Americans find that a hockey puck buzzes around too quickly, being subjected to a few hours of badminton will no doubt glaze the eyes of many a cheese doodle sofa denizen.

The match throwing Olympic badminton scandal has placed the sport under the media glare. Several teams were turfed for intentionally trying to lose to determine their seeds in the next round, or according to the rulebooks – “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” (known in soccer circles as “much of the first round of the Euro and World Cup”).

As a point of interest, one of us actually played quasi competitive high-school badminton doubles – as a way to book several afternoons off school, as the tournament’s location was a school providentially located close to the home of our partner, whose place was stocked with lots of movies and the kind of junk food listed above. After several quick losses (to be fair, we actually didn’t try to lose quickly to make it out of there as fast as possible, but were in tough in a part of the Greater Toronto Area featuring the highest population density of Chinese) we headed home and this was assuredly the last time the sport’s ever crossed our collective minds.

The scandal has made the unthinkable happen – making badminton somewhat interesting.