There are sports that fans remember only during the Olympic Games. Badminton is one of those games. It is almost impossible to find a person who is interested in various competitions, who clearly knows and understands what is happening in this exciting launch of a flyer over the net. Everyone knows that badminton is mainly ruled by athletes from Asia, and there are no more special events there.
However, there was a case when attention to badminton in Russia increased tenfold, and this happened during the days of the 2012 London Olympics. Russian girls, despite their status as outsiders, were able to sensationally win medals Olympic games due to the “dirty” games of the favorites.
The new format of the badminton doubles tournament was tested exactly at London 2012. Instead of the formula “lost – flew”, it was decided to make a kind of group tournament, from where the winning and runner-up pairs could go directly to the quarterfinals. final. But the trick was that with this format, the notorious favorites of China and South Korea could choose their opponents in a relaxed manner. It was clear that the European couples were not rivals. This situation in the world of badminton has been developing exactly since this sport entered the official program of the 1992 games in Barcelona. From 1992 to 2012, only badminton players from China and South Korea medaled.
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The pairs that won the first games in the group could, without straining, choose weaker opponents from the second group for the final matches. As a result, during the two doubles games of the favorites in London, the public, which grew to as many as six thousand, had to watch the frank bubblegum, instead of the usual passionate cuts with whoops and shouts, as in tennis.
Koreans Chun Kyun Eun/Kim Ha Na and Hae Jong Eun/Kim Min Jin, as well as Chinese Yu Yang/Wang Xiaoli and Indonesian Gracia Poliy/Mailiana Jauhari, both games showed an utter unwillingness to gnaw at their fights. Flyers were flying everywhere, but not in the right part of the site. More precisely, exactly where they were sent. Koreans, Chinese and Indonesians did not want to win so much that sometimes the projectile did not hit them. At this level of play, it’s unthinkable. But the Olympic medal, as you know, does not smell, so everyone did not care about the people who came, the main thing was to make the playoffs more comfortable for you. Even the judge repeatedly tried to shout out the first numbers of the rating, but the ladies didn’t care at all.
The athletes went too far with the theatrical performance, to which the Badminton World Federation responded in a timely manner. Since all this Asian misfortune was shown live to the whole world, the officials had to react harshly to the situation. Four pairs of favorites were immediately disqualified. Surprisingly, such a decision of strict judges had a positive effect on the duet of Russian girls Nina Vislova and Valery Sorokina. Our girls have already forgotten to continue to participate in the Olympic tournament, having taken off sportingly in their group. However, the Russians had to hastily return to the “court”. The girls even had to run to the arena to take advantage of the final medals that had fallen from the sky.
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Such an uproar did not stop Wislova and Sorokina from going into their quarterfinal match with the South African duo Edwards/Viljoen and quite confidently defeating their rivals, earning a quick exit to the sensational historic semifinal. But there our duet awaited a much more serious test – the world’s second pair of Chinese Tin / Zhao. In the first set, our guys were hot and even had a chance to take the game for themselves, but they trailed just 19:21. And then the favorites finished off the national badminton masters. In the match for third place, Nina and Valeria had to battle with Canadians Alex Bruck/Michelle Lee, and they did what no one had done before or since. Nina Vislova and Valeria Sorokina won the first badminton medal in Russian history. Let it be “bronze”, but they never dreamed of such a thing before.
