VERY BAD THINGS: A badminton court lies unused yesterday at Wembley Arena after four women’s doubles teams were tossed out of the Olympics for trying to intentionally lose matches (inset) to improve their draw in the tournament. (
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LONDON — The temptation, when you wander past the core sports of swimming, gymnastics and track, when you stumble into the periphery, is to stifle laughter when you see just how silly — it’s really the only word — some Olympic sports are. Table tennis players cradle the soft, plastic ball like a canary egg and whisper at it in dozens of languages before serving, like Bird Fidrych on a Rosetta Stone jag.
Fencers always — and I mean, always — turn to the judges after making contact with an opponent. And every time — every time — they turn into Joba Chamberlain after a strikeout, yelping at full volume, pumping fists, trying with their enthusiasm to convincingly convey they’ve won the point, even if they’ve been smote like Monty Python’s black knight (who would, in Olympic competition, no doubt madly wave his bloody stumps at the judges and wail, “IT’S ONLY A FLESH WOUND!!!!!!!”).
And don’t even get me started — again — on the glorious absurdities involved in the sport of modern pentathlon, which somehow groups pistols, horses, swords, swimming pools and running shoes into one mishmash of a competition which sounds about as modern as leeches and muskets and tricorne hats.
So yes: Even if you are inclined to laugh, you should not laugh out of respect to the athletes, who are the very best in the world at what they do, even if what they do sometimes looks like the dormitory quad at happy hour.
Yes, badminton. I’m talking to you.
The other day a very proud, quite accomplished man named Tony Gunawan looked at me earnestly, straight in the eye, on the last day he would ever represent America in badminton doubles. He and his partner, Howard Bach, had lost all three matches — and all six games — at these Olympics, but once upon a time in his native Indonesia Gunawan had been an Olympic champion, considered one of the best doubles players ever.
This is what Gunawan said that day at Wembley Arena:
“I grew up playing badminton in Indonesia every day when I was a child. And then you see that in the United States it is a ‘backyard sport,’ where someone can play while holding a beer in the other hand …”
I did not laugh. I wanted to laugh. But did not.
Respect, you see, even though every ounce of your being, the moment you realize that badminton is an Olympic sport, is to ask: badminton? What’s next, lawn darts? Carry-an-egg-on-a-spoon-in-your-mouth races? Wiffle Ball? Toss Across?
Respect. Even badminton players deserve that much.
Except yesterday, the BOLDFACED, ALL-CAPS HEADLINES in every Fleet Street tabloid screamed at the first outrage to visit the games: Eight women’s doubles players had apparently channeled Arnold Rothstein and decided to throw some matches late in the pool round, in the hopes of bettering their quarterfinal draws.
In the middle of the mess were a couple of Chinese teams, the two best in the world, who were trying to engineer the draw so they wouldn’t play each other until the finals. Because, ironically, in a country where fun is a capital crime, China dominates just about every backyard barbecue game in creation. You should see them in swimming pool pop-a-shot. Their co-conspirators: one team from South Korea, another from Indonesia.
And, well … that was that. Laughter ensued. Guffaws, even. And the headlines didn’t only write themselves, they screamed themselves out of the imagination:
EIGHT WOMEN OUT
SAY IT AIN’T SO, YU!
BLACK SOX AND SHUTTLECOX
I don’t want to say there was a lot of outrage generated at the athletes in question, but The Post has learned Rusty Hardin has already inquired the proper translation of “y’all” into Chinese, Mandarin, Korean and Indonesian (according to what I can find on-line, that would be “Y’semua”).
OK, look: Nobody believes in cheating, and nobody believes in tanking games (unless you can acquire Andrew Luck or Tim Duncan, of course). And while the powers that be — the badminton brass — could have avoided all of this by simply having a knockout tournament, we would like to think the better angels of our nature usually win out, and when they don’t there is hell to pay. The athletes were kicked out. Justice prevailed.
Still, you wonder what the consequences would have been if they’d done something really awful. Like kept the cover off the cooler in the blazing sun. That’s the kind of stuff that’s unforgivable.