Quotulatiousness

September 9, 2023

7 Ways to Suck at Badminton

Filed under: Health, Humour, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Swift Badminton
Published 27 Sept 2019

This video will give you 7 tips and tricks to become a worse badminton player.
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July 19, 2023

Win A Point, Add A Layer Of Clothing | Badminton Insight Singles Match

Filed under: Humour, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Badminton Insight
Published 10 Apr 2022

A Badminton singles match BUT each time someone wins a point we have to add a layer of clothing!
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January 13, 2022

How A Village Keeps India’s Handmade Shuttlecock Industry Alive | Still Standing

Filed under: Business, India, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Business Insider
Published 10 Sep 2021

Jadurberia village is the shuttlecock capital of India where workers have been making badminton birdies for generations. But the rise of mechanized assembly lines and the popularity of synthetic shuttlecocks are threatening to shut down small factories like the Niyogi family’s Dodo Shuttles.

For more information, visit http://www.dodoshuttles.com/.

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How A Village Keeps India’s Handmade Shuttlecock Industry Alive | Still Standing

November 19, 2014

Corruption in the sport of … Badminton?

Filed under: Asia, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:02

Vice‘s Brian Blickenstaff smashes Badminton as “the world’s most corrupt sport”:

Late last week, it emerged that Lee Chong Wei, the world’s top badminton player, failed a drug test. A niche sport in the United States, badminton has been part of the Olympics since 1992 and enjoys huge popularity in Asia. Lee is the sport’s Novak Djokovic, a truly dominant force over the past several years. He’s the best player Malaysia, one of the world’s most badminton-mad countries, has ever produced. A two-time Olympic silver-medal winner, Lee is, or was, a favorite for gold in Rio de Janeiro; he faces a two year ban and could miss the Olympics entirely.

But Lee’s drug test isn’t notable simply because sports fans can’t look away when a giant teeters and falls; it’s notable because the incident is one of many scandals to hit badminton over the past year. On current form, badminton might be the world’s most corrupt sport.

In June, during the Japan Open, two Danish players were approached and offered north of 2,500 Euros to fix matches. The alleged fixer was Malaysian. The two players, Kim Astrup Sorenson and Hans Kristian Vittinghus, both reported the incident to authorities. 2,500 Euros might not be a lot of money, but the implications are huge. Vittinghus is the world’s 10th ranked singles player. If people are trying to flip a top-ten athlete, what’s happening lower down the pyramid?

I can attest that I’ve never been offered a bribe to throw a badminton game. Perhaps that’s because I’m not good enough to convincingly throw a game … unlike the Chinese Olympic players in 2012. Oh, wait … they weren’t convincing either.

August 3, 2012

Did the Olympic badminton tournament format lead directly to four teams being ejected?

Filed under: Britain, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:57

Scott Page and Simon Wilkie contend that the real responsibility for four badminton pairs being tossed out of the London Olympics should fall on the tournament organizers, not the players or their coaches:

Why though did teams try to lose? And specifically, why four teams? The answer lies in the organization of the Olympic tournament and provides an illustration of the importance of a field of economics known as mechanism design.

Here’s how the Olympics set up the tournament. In the “round robin” phase, the 16 teams were divided into four pools, each team playing all three other teams in its pool. The top two finishers in each pool would then advance to a playoff.

After pool play, the tournament becomes single elimination (also known as “win or go home,” with the lone exception that the semi-final losers would compete for the bronze medal). This single elimination portion would pit the winner of one pool against the runner-up in another pool. The winners and runners up were matched up in such a way that no two teams from the same pool would play in the first round.

The best teams advance, and by coming in first in your division, you play a runner up from another pool — an expected weaker team in the knockout round of eight. Not only does this make sense, it’s a tried and tested institution that has stood the test of time, from little league to the FIFA World Cup.

They offer some alternatives to the existing tournament format that might work better. On the players themselves, I see the point that Page and Wilkie are making, but I still agree with the BWF decision to sanction the players. For that matter, I’d support my local badminton club in this kind of decision in a local tournament. To have gotten away with what these teams attempted to do, they’d at least have to pretend to be seriously playing. I’ve seen better acting by seven-year-olds.

August 1, 2012

Badminton in the headlines, but not in a good way

Filed under: Britain, China, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:53

It’s not a sport that generally attracts a lot of attention during the Olympics, but several Badminton players are accused of deliberately losing games to secure better match-ups in the elimination round:

China’s Olympic sports delegation has begun an investigation into allegations two badminton players “deliberately lost” their match, state media say.

Doubles players Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli are among eight players charged by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) with “not using one’s best efforts to win”.

Four players from South Korea and two from Indonesia have also been charged.

Some of the players said they were saving energy. Reports say they wanted to lose to secure an easier draw.

It may not be a technical violation of the rules to “take it easy” in a non-critical game, but it does sound as if these particular players didn’t even bother to make it look like they were competing.

The match between the top-seeded Chinese duo and South Koreans Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na came under scrutiny after the longest rally in their game lasted four shots.

Match referee Thorsten Berg came on court at one point to warn the players, who also appeared to make deliberate errors.

Both pairs were already through to the quarter-finals.

The Chinese duo lost, meaning — Xinhua noted — that if both Chinese pairs continue to do well, they will not meet until the final.

Update: The IOC Badminton World Federation (BWF) brings out the ban hammer:

EIGHT female badminton players have been sent home from the Olympics, disqualified by the sport’s world federation after throwing matches in a case condemned by London Games boss Sebastian Coe as “depressing” and “unacceptable”.

A disciplinary hearing held this morning, which Australia’s badminton coach made a submission to, found that four players from South Korea, two from Indonesia and the competition’s top seeds from China deliberately tried to lose their qualifying matches in an attempt to manipulate their draws.

The four sets of doubles teams were charged after matches on Tuesday littered with basic errors. Accused by badminton’s international governing body of “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”, they were ultimately found guilty of trying to lose with the motive of improving their positions for the knockout stages.

The spectators who attended the matches on Tuesday night will not be offered refunds by the London organizers, according to the BBC:

Update, the second: I couldn’t find any actual footage of the match in question until CTV posted it (not embeddable, unfortunately). It’s amazingly bad. The audience absolutely deserve a full refund.

May 27, 2011

Badminton: moving against the tide

Filed under: Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:38

If they’d wanted to be sure that the sport got more media attention, they sure chose an effective way to do it:

In an attempt to revive flagging interest in women’s badminton as the 2012 London Olympics approach, officials governing the sport have decided that its female athletes need to appear more, how to put it, womanly.

To create a more “attractive presentation,” the Badminton World Federation has decreed that women must wear skirts or dresses to play at the elite level, beginning Wednesday. Many now compete in shorts or tracksuit pants. The dress code would make female players appear more feminine and appealing to fans and corporate sponsors, officials said.

The rule has been roundly criticized as sexist, a hindrance to performance and offensive to Muslim women who play the sport in large numbers in Asian countries. Implementation has already been delayed by a month. Athletes’ representatives said they would seek to have the dress code scrapped, possibly as early as Saturday at a meeting of the world’s badminton-playing nations in Qingdao, China.

“This is a blatant attempt to sexualize women,” said Janice Forsyth, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario. “It is amazing. You’d think at some point, somebody would have said: ‘Wait a minute. What are we doing?’ ”

There are about 85 players at my badminton club. Only two women regularly wear skirts to play. Despite this ruling, I doubt that many of our players will choose to switch.

August 3, 2010

Badminton, as described by professional sports announcer

Filed under: Humour, Media, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

H/T to Mark Frauenfelder for the link.

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