First, there were four teams disqualified from the women’s doubles in badminton. The two Chinese teams, a South Korean team and an Indonesian team were attempting to throw games in the round-robin phase in hopes of securing favorable seeds in the elimination rounds. The impetous for this was that the Chinese were trying to avoid meeting in the semi-final round, resulting in China losing out on a shot of finishing first and second, and settling for a third or fourth place finish for their second team. One player also put forward the excuse that they already qualified and were saving their energy for round two. Their appeals were turned down.

Second, Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria was disqualified Monday for not putting forth a ‘bonafide effort’ in the 800m semi-final, trotting off the course with 150m left in a race he was clearly not going to win. Indeed, he was thrown out of the Olympics, all together, before his 1500m final. He appealed, and after a doctor said he indeed had a knee problem, he was reinstated and went on to win gold in the mile. 

Third, a British canoeist did the same thing, saving energy in a race in which he was finishing lasat in order to ‘save himself’ for the 200m sprint. No action was taken. 

Fourth, Dr. J. has observed a number of track athletes slowing down in the last 10 or 20 meters of a heat or semi-final when qualifying is well in hand. 

Dr. J. is of two minds on this issue. 

First and foremost, he believes that in sport, you should play to the best of your ability with the goal of fairly and respectfully defeating your opponent. Anything else is an insult to the opponent who is putting forth his best effort. That being said, he understands, in the case of track athletes slowing down in a heat/semi-final that it is foolhardy to increase the risk of injury that going all out entails in a heat where you are well ahead of your opponents. He also understands emptying the bench when a team victory is well at hand. 

Secondly, Dr. J. understands that sometimes winning is defined by your endgame. Your goal in a tournament may not (only) be to win the game that is laid out in front of you, but to win the tournament. To this effect, he gets what the folks in the first three stories were trying to do.

In the case of the individual athletes from Algeria and Great Britain, their heat/semi-final were a lost cause. They weren’t going to advance. And that is where game theory comes in. These athletes made the calculation that they already lost, and therefore, why expend energy or risk injury that would prevent them from winning their premier event. They were not affecting the outcome of their event they were participating in, as they already lost.

For the badminton players, however, the Chinese were attempting to throw their games because they were trying to affect their standing in order to have a more favorable path to victory for both of their teams. As a consequence however, they were affecting the outcome of the event they were actively participating in. Their opponents were retaliating for the very same reasons. They felt if the Chinese valued losing these round robin games, that their victories (South Korea and Indonesia) would be to their detriment, and retaliated in return.

Now Dr. J. is no fool. He has played in double elimination tournaments at soccer camp where he was on the orange team really didn’t want to play red in the next round, and would rather play blue, because he knew green could beat red and his team could beat green because of matchups. That being said, he and his peers had this thing called pride that prohibited them from throwing a game to improve their standing.

Kerry Walsh and Misty May-Traynor are of similar mind. They could not give a rat’s ass who they play. They were so focused on playing the best volleyball they could that their goals not only included a gold medal, but they did not even want to lose a set against their opponents, or even let them get to a set-point. That is an admirable competitive spirit that matches their excellence.

As a youth, when Dr. J. played soccer. in fifth grade, which is before they had a playoff system, the trophy went to the team with the best regular season record. There was a team who in the three years Papa J was coaching, never beat us. That season, in the first two matchups they did not even score a goal on us (4-0 and 2-0). They were, however, half a game ahead of us in the standings. They had defensive players, and played a defense oriented game. We, on the other hand, were an offensive juggernaut. We played with 4 men up front and our defensive strategy consisted of getting the ball back from the opponent, controlling time of possession by controlling the ball and passing a lot, and keeping the ball in their defensive half of the field.  So, in that final game, they knew the could not beat us, or even score against us. They said, fine, we will play for the 0-0 tie. As there were no tie breaker beyond 2 five-minute overtimes. We had 30 shots on goal, they may have had 2 or 3. None were clean shots, as they packed it in, and none of them ended up in the net. They tied the game and won the league. Dr. J. was pissed but grudgingly admired their tactics. It was the only thing they could do if they wanted that trophy.

So Dr. J. gets what the badminton teams were doing. He doesn’t agree with it. He doesn’t like it. He finds what they were doing was wrong, unsportsmanlike and cowardly. A simple forfeit would have been wrong, but would have been more gracious. That being said, they were doing what they could to achieve their endgame within the rules as established. It may behove the IOC to look at how the games with round robin qualifiers are set up, and even bring along a mathematician who specializes in game theory to consult to insure that teams are not tempted to game the system in the future.