ah, apologies

amazing how nobody has mentioned the immense achievement of the womans pair winning gold, or the first men's team gymnastics medal in 100 years, where I to do so, no doubt I would be directed to "other sports" so that the usual suspects can maintain their ire at anything positive going on in the UK.

Don't know about anyone else, but I've always said I have no problem (at all!) with the sport. And I have tweeted my thoughts on the medals today etc.

It's the total crap surrounding it that is enough to do my head in.

Still, at least central London being a ghost town and businesses with a chronic lack of customers* will give Gideon his next excuse.

And in the meantime, we now have Boris caught on a zipwire over Victoria Park.



He'd make a lovely piñata.



* One of the owners at the small, independent cafe where I go for lunch every day, just off Euston Road, was just telling me that they've never had such little custom since they opened, years ago. Museums, galleries, restaurants, theatres, hotels, shops – all seeing far, far less custom. And we were told that the Games would be a boost to the economy, not to the recession.

I'd class attempting to fix a match, in order to give yourself the best chance of winning overall, cheating. What would you call it?

Decadence. That's how they carried on in Greece and Spain until recently.

The lack of trade is good for the customer though. Only this morning in Central London a cafe had a sign up offering a croissant and large hot drink for £1.65. I was straight in. Beats my usual Costa £2.45 just for the drink.

Tactics

Oh aye. A coffee and a sandwich is the sort of thing that brought down the Roman empire.

Hmmm

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Two of the pairs have been disqualified now too.

I gather the charge was not using their best endeavours to win. What about runners and swimmers that don't use their best endeavours in the heats so that they save energy for the finals or other events later in the day or week. People have paid to see the heats and deserve to see people perform to the best of their endeavours yet the IOC do not disqualify them.

Personally I don't think there is much difference between what the badminton teams have done and swimmers/runners regularly do.

Not quite.
Runners and swimmers still have to achieve a place, they don't just lose.

I blame the system.
If the system makes it possible to know who you play, this sort of thing will happen.
Badminton should be a straight knockout tournament.

as someone else pointed out, just last week the BBC was celebrating the 2 rowers from 1948 who did exactly the same thing to avoid the tough Danes in the semi final.

No balls, all cock.

Thing is if both pairs in a match are trying to lose then isn't there as much skill in that as trying to win? Also, I am not sure it would save much energy (as the Chinese said they were trying to do) as both pairs could presumably hit it into the net for weeks on end (unless they are really bad!).

Were you fiddling with yourself too?

Tut! Tut!

The lovely Gail Emms said the same

My feeling is that they've been booted out because they were getting booed, and thus giving the games a bad image. Nothing more than that.