Striving to Lose

New York Botanical Gardens, Bronx, NY.  Copyright 2012: singeronthesand

Punish the insolent - make an example of them.

Who knows? Somebody might learn a good lesson.

Proverbs 19:25

For months preceding the start of the London Olympic games, and now when the games are up and running, we have been fed a steady diet of inspirational stories regarding the sacrifices that have been made by individual athletes and entire teams to train, qualify, and then participate in the games.  Stories of endless hours of practice, broken bones, training exhaustion and indomitable spirits have filled the media and inspired the public. In the midst of all the hype, do you remember hearing any stories about individuals striving to learn to lose?  I can just hear you now:  "No one wants to lose, for Pete's sake!  The whole point is to win - to win a medal, to do your best, to... WIN!!"  I'm not sure it is the whole point of the Olympics, but yes, every Olympian's dream is to win.  And most of them believe in winning by training - hard and long.  For eight women badminton players, however, the route to winning was through deliberately losing.

Two years ago, I had really hoped to possibly take my daughters to the Calgary Winter Olympics.  I trolled through the official website, looking for available tickets for any competition that I thought my kids might want to see.  I was absolutely flabbergasted by the cost of a single seat for one of the heats - never mind the semi-finals or finals.  A nosebleed seat for speed skating heats were several hundred dollars each.  Good seats for the finals were in the thousands.  Imagine saving your money, traveling to London, purchasing $400 seats for the round robin of badminton, and then finding yourself watching four women who were trying to outdo each other at.... losing.

Such was the conundrum yesterday in Women's Badminton, when two South Korean teams, China's top-seeded team, and an Indonesian team barely went through the motions during their games, dinking shuttlecocks into the net, slamming shots way wide - anything to lose the point.  When the fans realized what they were doing, the venue was filled with booing and cat calls.  Apparently the women believed that if they lost in the opening round, they would have an easier opponent in the next.  Never mind that the audience had paid good money to see a top-notch game, particularly by the world doubles champion Chinese women.

The International Olympics Committee immediately disqualified the eight women from any further participation in the London games, and they may face further sanctions for their actions.  So much for the best badminton players in the world doing their best to make the worst shots.  Hopefully other athletes in the competition will sit up and take notice.