Four Badminton pairs disqualified from Games

The four women’s doubles pairs at the centre of a match-fixing scandal at the London 2012 badminton tournament have been disqualified.

The top seeds from China, two pairs from South Korea and another from Indonesia deliberately conceded points in an apparent attempt to lose their matches and manipulate the quarter-final draw.

All eight players had been charged by the Badminton World Federation/BWF with “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”.