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| Alex Bruce Michelle Li |
It’s no doubt heart-breaking for the eight women badminton players who have been expelled from the Olympics by the World Badminton Federation. These young people from China, South Korea and Indonesia are naive and were foolishly influenced. It’s a shame they were tricked — or tricked themselves — into thinking it was okay to intentionally lose. Their teams had already qualified and by losing, the badminton women were trying to succeed to a match against a weak team still left in the competition. But sports is about playing the game strenuously to win. The judges were right to disqualify. The two Canadian athletes who have been the lucky beneficiaries of the match-fixing won’t be tempted to make a similar mistake. Alex Bruce of Toronto and Michele Li of Markham received another chance in the doubles tournament because two of the offending teams had been in their group. The Canadians were thus launched into the quarter-final, and they took advantage. Ms. Bruce and Ms. Li beat the Australian team in three sets (21-9, 18-21, 21-18) to advance to an unexpected semi-final appearance against Japan. Win or lose, the IOC can be sure that Canada’s girls will be giving it everything they’ve got.
