It’s all over the interwebs that Chinese, Indonesian and South Korean badminton players have been caught taking a dive.
The federation found the players guilty of “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport” in matches Tuesday night.
Players were roundly booed after they appeared not to exert themselves in preliminary rounds of the round-robin tournament before they were set to move on to elimination competition.
It seems they were sandbagging – doing less than their best – in order to be matched with an easier opponent later in the competition in hopes of doing better in the over all results.
This doesn’t seem very olympian, does it? But it does seem pretty human. I think if you peeked into most business operations, churches, and even families, you’d find a fair amount of “not using one’s best effort to win a match.”
We call it being tired, overwhelmed or discouraged, but the world doesn’t have any more grace for us than the Olympic committee did for these atheletes.
When we take a role – be it CEO or family member – people an expectation that we’re are going to try. That expectation is entirely justified.
