Sportsmanship

"badmintongate" got me thinking
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/02/china-yu-yang-quits-badminton-olympics

if "sportsmanship" is always trying one's best to win, then, if the rules and stipulation implies that the best route to winning a tournament is by first losing, then surely trying your best to win would be to swallow your pride and lose the battle, in order to win the war?

Since the badminton people all got disqualified, all the swimmers who "saved themselves" in the qualifying rounds will need to have their medals removed?? Cycling teams who take turns riding hard to get their teammates to win? Disqualify them all? Where is the line when tactics become cheating? Would it have been okay if they were less blatant (i.e. less honest) about what they were doing?

Cyclists riding like that are still trying to (get their teammate) to win that race. What about football teams who go ahead and then "close down the game"? Swimmers saving themselves in heats are still trying to qualify.

Which is to say that the badminton thing was different...

were they not trying to qualify???

football is the worst of all tbh - disqualify the lot of them?? the group stages thing pretty sure football commentators often hinted at teams may want to do it?

The badminton players in question were trying to give themselves the best chance of winning a medal. Intent on qualifying, but looking to do so in the best position for the knockout stages.

Ken's question is a really good one, actually. The BBC is currently boasting about Rebecca Adlington "easing" her way out of her heat, quoted as saying she's going to "give it her all" in the final implying she wasn't in the heat. Mark Cavendish blamed other cyclists for him not winning his (individual) medal for using the tactics he did in the World Championships. Should cycling be considered a team event with team medals?

I think he's right, if it's bad sportsmanship in one case it has to be considered that way for all.

Adlington was aiming to conserve her energy, not deliberately trying to lose. Had the badminton players given it 75% effort, there wouldn't have been an issue. They were deliberately hitting it into the net, though.

I think the onus is always on the organisers to minimise any incentive to lose. It's a stupid situation to be in.

Well then they're definitely as guilty as each other - the Chinese defence to the charge of "not using one's best efforts to win" was "Tomorrow it's the knockout rounds, so we've already qualified and we wanted to have more energy for the knockout rounds". xp

That might be their excuse but the assumption from everyone else was that they were mucking about in order to get an easier draw in the next round. There's a difference between playing within your best abilities (and being indifferent to the consequences) and deliberately setting out to fail.

They're not setting out to fail, they're still trying their hardest to win the medal - which is the ultimate point of the thing. I mean I wasn't watching the football, but Japan and Honduras played out a goalless draw last night knowing a point each would see them both through. The stats for that game would be interesting.

They were setting out to fail in that particular match. Clearly the format is largely to blame but their conduct still fell below the minimum standard the sport expected of them.

The conduct thing is a completely different charge. They were still found guilty of not using their "best efforts" in a non-medal winning match. The only way you can pass that charge is to try as hard as you can every time, in every heat, in every match.

i don't know all the details but i think this is mostly bs, if you create a flawed tournament structure that rewards losing then you can't throw a fit when people play to lose. you can't have a legitimate competition when one or more sides has nothing on the line, it's like trying to play poker with fake money, it changes the way people play even if they'd like to win.

Adlington was aiming to conserve her energy, not deliberately trying to lose. Had the badminton players given it 75% effort, there wouldn't have been an issue. They were deliberately hitting it into the net, though.
― Temporarily Famous In The Czech Republic (ShariVari), Thursday, 2 August 2012 13:12 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a good point to think about, actually - what should be this threshold? 75%? 50%? 25%?

also, the officials apparently gave a warning to the players - would like to know what this warning actually was.

why didn't the game get abandoned right away? was the warning "if you carry on like this, we will see if there's an outcry from the righteous public, if not, we'll let it go, otherwise we'll disqualify you?"

are they not allowed to just concede the match rather than play it?

i don't know what the rules are! it seems nobody cares about what the rules are.

maybe this has been the grand strategy of the chinese team, to sacrifice a pair of their players, in order to eliminate the strongest south korean/indonesian opponents? in which case omg! skills.

xp Does that leave both teams clustered around the referee waiting for the first point at which they can concede?

Perhaps they could toss a coin for it.

oh so both teams benefited more from losing than from winning? how the hell do you create a tournament structure where that happens?

Straight knockout?

Bah sorry, I thought you were asking how to avoid it. In theory any situation with a group stage and a knockout stage can provide this if the teams know the shape of it ahead of time - one solution is that the set up of Group A winner plays Group B runner-up is either randomised after the survivors are known, or pre-generated and held in escrow until then.

I don't get cycling at all, what are "negative tactics" in that? Like getting in the other guy's way?

Nah, more like closing down a football match because you're too worried about marking the other team's dangerous striker to ever go on the attack, and you'd rather settle for a nil-nil draw than let the guy score.

Specifically, on Saturday, it was the peloton not helping the British team enough to reel in the breakaway, which would have been easy if they'd pulled their weight, because they didn't want to risk Cav getting in place in a bunch sprint, even though there were sprinters in there that *might* have won against him head-to-head. It was less risky to let Wiggo et al bury themselves and leave the breakaway riders to it, even though they arguably (Germany esp.) did themselves out of a medal chance in the process.

Right, see I don't understand a work of that.

Like just at a basic level I don't understand what a team does in an individual sport like cycling.

Like how does riding hard get your team-mates to win?

basically the format of the Badminton was stupid and the organisers shd be banned from the sport not the poor players left in that idiotic situation

Yes

xxxxp saw the 2nd half of that Japan-Honduras game. Japan are the world champions so p good but they didn't really try imo to win that match. A draw meant they got to remain where they were and play their QF in same stadium, Cardiff iirc.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/badminton-federation-screws-players-pay-price

Count me among those who blame the badminton federation at least as much as the players themselves. It's idiocy to set up a knockout system in which it pays off to lose, especially when it's pretty obvious that your system rewards strategic play. It's like complaining about cricket teams deliberately slowing down to produce an inconclusive result, or basketball players trying to run out the clock. It's all part of the game. If you don't like it, don't set up the rules to encourage it.

i think i agree with this. gaming things like this is part of the game. they weren't taking a fall for a cash reward or something.

last night on the radio i heard various olympic and world badminton officials defending their rule system and reminding everyone that there is an injuction to "play at all times to the best of one's ability" (or something), so they are clearly feeling some heat. no doubt these disqualified teams are super pissed, i would be!

@Yellow Kid it's all about slipstreaming. I think we talked about this somewhere else on ILX recently but I'll go again. At decent speeds, you can save 30%+ of your energy by riding behind someone else. The strong people in a team spend time in front of the weaker people to kind of tow them along so they can keep up. When a team has a specialist sprinter, that guy isn't going to be as fast up hills and will need to save some strength for the finish, so he might not take any turns at the front during the rest of the race.

Of course you can also slipstream someone who's not on your team, so road cycling is all about the payoff between co-operation and competition. It's debatable, but the peloton may have been better off co-operating with TeamGB to help them keep up with the breakaway, given that Team GB, rotating 4 people on the front, finally failed to keep up with the (very large) breakaway, who were co-operating fully and able to take much shorter turns on the front.

The reason they didn't is obvious if they had a man in the breakaway and no capable sprinter. If you have someone in a breakaway, and they're good enough to finish well, you don't want them caught, so you can piddle around and try to break up the rhythm of the peloton to slow them down, as happened in the women's race.

Germany needed a bunch sprint finish to have a chance at a medal, and they put Tony Martin on the front a little, for a little while, but it wasn't enough. They will have wanted the Brits as tired as possible to limit Cav's chances, so they were gambling on TeamGB being even stronger than they were, imo. Australia had a man in the breakaway, but not their strongest finisher, so it was a gamble for them that also didn't pay off.

tl;dr?

if "sportsmanship" is always trying one's best to win

it's not. sportsmanship is always trying one's best to win up to the point where it conflicts with fairness, ethics, and respect of your opponent. the badminton players violated those conditionals.

I'd disagree that they violated those conditionals.

xp I read it, I just can't understand it.

they didn't violate anything, they were playing the game under the rules regime as everyone understood it. they were trying to win a medal! chess players can't give up a piece anymore?

The tactics in cycling are v weird tho (great fictional book by Tim Krabbe called The Rider which is exceptional on the psychology, temporary alliances, and tactics of bike racing). But you'll often see cyclists who've worked together for 100k, from separate teams, suddenly stop 'racing', in the sense that they stop going as fast as possible, and start working out how they can outwit the other cyclists they're with. Extend that to all sorts of aspects in cycle racing and it becomes tactics rather than gamesmanship.

It's also understood by people who watch and people who participate that this will happen. The badminton felt different. It's about points for one thing - you're regularly 'losing'. No cyclist wd seek to lose - they're just seeking an advantage.

the badminton players were looking at the entire competition as the 'game' and not one individual match

i mean, i agree it's some belichek shit, and if i were in the stands i'd be booing too. but this is something sport officials should have seen coming.

there's enough blame to go around for the players and the officials both imo. any athlete should know that flat-out throwing a match is one of the cardinal sins of sport. nagl.

cardinal sins of spectator/gambling sports

i thought olympics was supposed to be above all that

but in the end it shows itself as the ultimate manifestation of politics and mob justice

badminton players were looking at the entire competition as the 'game' and not one individual match

Yeah that makes sense. That's also not playing badminton per se.

I mean considering the entire competition is fine but not up to the point of deliberately and obviously throwing a match. That is not playing to the rules of your sport, and clearly gamesmanship not sportsmanship.

idk anything about the sport, i wonder if these teams had behaved how teams do in previous tournaments

there are (somewhat vague) rules in north american team sports that prevent a club from resting all its best players after having clinched a playoff berth, the idea being that the customers have paid to see a real game, etc.

(if you've played fantasy [american] football, however, it's a serious issue that if your best player is on a really good team, he might not play in week 17 -- i've heard of leagues that finish up in week 16 because of this.)

it's enough of a problem in soccerball that they start all the games in the final week/round of qualifying at the same time.

i think the badminton players got screwed by a ridiculous format, but they also screwed themselves by making it too obvious. there's a line there somewhere and they crossed it.

hooray i finally understand how tactics in cycling work! now, how about relay swimming? i hear them talk about the perfect choice of order, but i can't imagine what difference is being made when you'd think you have four people going as fast as they can and that's that.

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/cycling/9448399/London-2012-Olympics-Philip-Hindes-crash-sets-up-dash-to-Sir-Chris-Hoys-greatest-victory.html