Reuters: Sports News: Badminton: Chinese players slam team mates' expulsion

Reuters: Sports News Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Badminton: Chinese players slam team mates' expulsion Aug 2nd 2012, 17:08 China's Xu Chen (L) and Ma Jin play against Poland's Robert Mateusiak and Nadiezda Zieba during their mixed doubles quarter-finals match during the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Wembley Arena August 1, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Bazuki Muhammad By Ian Ransom LONDON | Thu Aug 2, 2012 1:08pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - China's Olympic badminton players backed their under-fire head coach Li Yongbo and slammed the expulsion of two of their team mates as the match-throwing scandal continued to overshadow the tournament on Thursday. "I think it's extremely unfair. Firstly, it's a problem with the format, that's what I believe," Xu Chen, who will partner Ma Jin in Friday's mixed doubles final against another Chinese pair, told Reuters at Wembley Arena. "I also thinks it's extremely regrettable because an athlete's highest goal is to be an Olympian. "Even if they weren't allowed to compete for the gold medal, they should still be allowed to compete. It's such a shame." The Badminton World Federation expelled four women's doubles pairs from the Olympic tournament on Wednesday for deliberately trying to lose their matches to secure an easier run through the knock-out rounds. World champions Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli were among the casualties for China, who many competing teams blamed for instigating the farcical scenes at Wembley Arena on Tuesday. The top-seeded pair and the other six athletes were being removed from the athletes' village, an IOC spokesperson said earlier on Thursday. Yu also promptly announced her retirement from the sport in a post on her Chinese microblog, slamming the federation for shattering her and her doubles partner's "dream". China's world number two singles player Wang Xin told Reuters she hoped her Olympic champion team mate Yu would change her mind about pulling out of the sport. "I will urge her to continue playing," she said. "Regardless of what happened, that disqualification was too much. Those girls have been working so hard for four years to get to these Olympics." COACHES IN SPOTLIGHT The spotlight has turned onto coaches' roles in the unedifying charade, which saw the players deliberately dump shots into the net and hit long, prompting jeers from the crowd. An IOC said spokesman said he had requested the Chinese, South Korean and Indonesian delegations to investigate the entourages of the disqualified players. China has already announced a probe into the team and Li apologized to the Chinese people in quotes to state media. But pundits have demanded he step down for bringing shame to the nation of 1.3 billion people. "The bat should not strike the Chinese players. The head coach Li Yongbo is the main reason for the use of the 'malicious strategy' employed at the Beijing Games," state news agency Xinhua said in a commentary. Xu and Ma celebrated their 21-23 21-18 21-13 semi-final victory over Indonesia's Tontowi Ahmad and Liliyana Natsir by pointing at the Chinese team in the stands, where Li, wearing the national team's yellow jacket and his traditional black baseball cap, gave a standing ovation with other team officials. "I don't know about what is happening in China right now, because I've just been concentrating on my own game," Wang said. "But of course I support Li ... I will continue to. He's our head coach after all." Xu said the Chinese team were trying to draw a line under the match-throwing scandal and that the fall-out had not affected the team's mindset. His words rang true for his match at Wembley Arena, where he and Ma overhauled their opponents despite the crowd being firmly in the Indonesians' corner. "It's in the past, so we'll let it stay in the past. The competition's not over yet. We've still got the final tomorrow," he said, referring to the gold medal decider against team mates Zhang Nan and Zhao Yunlei. "They'll be going all out and we'll be going all out." (Editing by Nigel Hunt) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions