Some say CL deliberately "kelong", losing the match on purpose. These guys must have lost money betting on him. But CL should know better that "match-fixing" is a crime with BWF!
Yeah, I lost count of how many clears and smashes that CL put out the back or the sides. Steen the commentator kept saying the stadium draft conditions favoured LCW more, but didn't make sense to me as CL kept making mistakes on both ends of the court. :shrug:
Totally agree with you Loh, but I want to raise a deeper discussion. Is there is a difference between "match-fixing" and sandbagging or perhaps "strategically not injuring yourself". I mean match fixing is such a grey thing, you can't possibly prove it or disprove it other than when two teams of the same country do it ⇒ (China Olympics in group stage, they got caught and Korea did too in a different tournament. But even then it was not proven, you just can't prove fixing versus "a bad match") Like for perspective, 3 examples: 1) If a player chooses "NOT to participate" in a tournament because they want to rest. Is that match fixing? Even when they would have won the tournament? Of course not. 2) If a player chooses to "Not try his best and lose" because his teammates or country could use points for other teammates to advance. Then OF COURSE it's match fixing. But But but! 3) If a player chooses to not push their body to the limit of possible injury because they have "already qualified" for the Olympics and is a "Long Shot" ahead of all other ranked players. Is it match fixing or unsportsmanlike? I think this is closer to scenario 1) As much as I would have loved to see a more heated closer match between Chen Long and Lee Chong Wei, it might have been that CL knew that "drift was difficult," "LCW was on home ground and on fire," "he was behind by a lot," "he may have had to push himself to possible injury to win." Thus he decided to take a relaxed strategic defense approach to playing. What if he still wanted to put up a good fight? But his coaches said "DO NOT INJURE YOURSELF" before Olympics. What do you do? Is it against the rules to play a tournament at 80% safe capacity? That's all I'm trying to say. We gotta give a break to these top of the top athletes sometimes. Still, I love Chen Long's positive attitude. Though I was still super surprised how badly he got thrashed game 1 vs Jonatan Christie. Maybe Jonatan just that much better now. Young blood.
