Olympic Gamesmanship

I hate when things like this happen …

Four badminton teams were thrown out of the 2012 London Olympics for trying to lose in their preliminary matches so they would face weaker teams in the next round.

Bye bye doubles players from China, Indonesia and South Korea.

If you watched video of the action (or “non-action” as the case may be), you saw players deliberately making weak shots into the net, or out of bounds. It was so obvious what they were doing.

That irritated Olympic officials, who decided to make an example of them and threw them out of the Games. Cheating? Or gamesmanship? You decide.

Taoufik Makhloufi, winner of the men’s 1500-meter Gold Medal, is proud of, and happy for, his win. And rightly so. Fifteen-hundred meters is a helluva long way to run. But his win wasn’t without a little bit of controversy (and possibly gamesmanship) even before the Algerian took his first step in the event.

See, Makhloufi stopped running in his 800-meter heat, raising the suspicion of Olympic officials. As winner of the event in the African Games last year, he should have qualified for the final in his heat easily.

Consequently, they expelled him from the games, concluding he threw the race so he wouldn’t tire himself out before the 1,500-meter race.

Still, they had a doctor check him out, and sure enough, the medico said he had a knee injury. So, they let him back into the Games and let him run the 1,500-meter finals. Amazingly, his knee had healed in one day. Miracle? Or gamesmanship? You decide.