London Olympics 2012 saw a great match fixing scandal as Olympic badminton players from South Korea, China and Indonesia are charged with trying to lose their games against eachother. Far east honor is underfoot.

London Olympics 2012 / NationalTurk – Extraordinary and unsportsmanlike scenes on Tuesday at matches between China and South Korea and then at South Korea and Indonesia stained the heart and soul of Olympic games when female players from these countries repeatedly hit shots wide or served into the net. The players were warned on-court by the referee as a consequence.

Olympic badminton head referee Torsten Berg issued a black card to both teams during a female doubles game between South Korea and Indonesia. The referee later dropped the charges for the disqualification of the parties involved but a total of 8 players from two doubles matches have been charged with failing to play to the best of their abilities, which is called a match fixing attempt.

London Olympics : Fans boo female badminton players for lackluster performance

Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli, the Chinese top seeds at women’s badminton and their South Korean opponents Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na were had been booed by spectators.

The Korean pair won the match in two straight sets: 21-14 21-11. The longest rally in the first game was four strokes.

Later, another Korean pair were playing against an Indonesian side when the same referee, Thorsten Berg, threatened the players with disqualification because of their behaviour. In that game Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung were up against the Indonesian pairing of Meiliana Juahari and Greysia Polii.

Badminton World Federation reacts to match fixing allegations at London Olympics 2012

Badminton World Federation’s reacted swiftly and took the matters into investigation after suspicous matches in which eight women’s doubles competitors from China, South Korea and Indonesia appeared to play poorly on purpose. Badminton World Federation said it had charged four pairs of female Olympic doubles players with not using their best efforts to win a match. They are a Chinese team, two teams from South Korea and one team from Indonesia.

All sides had already qualified for the next round in the female badminton competition at London Olympics and the scenes appeared to be an attempt by teams to manipulate which team they will have to face in the next round.

Chinese player Yu defended her performance after the match vs South Korea , expressing she wanted to ease up ahead of the knockout phase. ‘ Actually, these opponents really were strong. This is the first time we’ve played them and tomorrow it’s the knockout rounds, so we’ve already qualified and we wanted to have more energy for the knockout rounds.’

‘ Really, it’s not necessary to go out hard again when the knockout rounds are tomorrow.’

Paisan Rangsikitpho, a member of the Badminton World Federation’s technical committee, stated after the farcical matches that the governing body was aware of what had occurred. ‘ We will have a real discussion tonight to evaluate what has transpired, but I have to get all the facts.’

Bulgarian badminton player : China control matches, they do what they want !

Petya Nedelcheva, the Bulgarian women’s singles 15th seed at current world badminton ranking , who was playing on an adjacent court at the time of the first incident, was forthright in her general criticism of China.

“China control everything,” she claims. “I don’t know who controlled the match to lose but if it is China again, they did it so many times last year, they didn’t play against each other in 20 matches. They do what they want.”

Nedelcheva’s comments are supported by figures compiled by online magazine Badzine earlier in 2012 indicating that of the 99 all-Chinese matches played in major tournaments in 2011, 20 were walkovers.

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