Haha, nice find event. I wonder if it was written with a little tongue in cheek. In any case, the mention of badminton is so minor I think it'd be by-passed by the reader. Nothing really to get too worked about.
Oh the article is certainly tongue-in-cheek. I'm just pointing out that the tug-of-war coach is quite serious in his opposition to baseball, softball, and golf but the example he chooses as incontrovertible proof that sports that don't belong are in the Olympics is badminton, almost as if he thinks it deserves Olympic status EVEN LESS than those other three. I'm not getting worked up. I just think it's a shame that a guy who seems to share my reasons for thinking baseball and golf do not belong in the Olympics would make such an uninformed choice of examples. On a side note, I think baseball players and golfers get paid so much money that they truly believe they are athletes and therefore belong in the Olympics but I always wonder how the archers and trap shooters feel when they pass Lin Dan or Usain Bolt in the Athletes' Village. Ironically, that coach says 'you watch the Olympics and you see badminton' yet in the U.S. how much badminton does one actually see?
I get where you're coming from. Personally I don't even react anymore to such comments. You read it, go haha and move on. It used to get a rise out of me but these days, I treat it more with amusement. In a sense there are too many subscribing to this thread that are oversensitive to negative comments on badminton. I commend their passion for the sport but keep it up and they'll turn more people off than on to it. I compare it to the complex us Canucks (you should know well) have with our big brother to the south. Every time they mention anything remotely bad about Canada, we're up in arms throwing a fit. It's time to grow up and tackle this and badminton opinions in a more mature fashion.
