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Former world champion reveals that she was ordered to lose Olympic semi-final

479 points by danskeren 4y ago

balentio 4y ago
Have a re-match in not China between the two without any other crap if for no other reason than to heal the spiritual damage done by the Chinese Olympic mafia.
- not2b 4y ago
  Can't happen. The winner would have to go into exile from China to participate, and both are about double the age now and no longer play competitively (the thrown match was 22 years ago).
- bombcar 4y ago
  The outcome may have been the same from the thrown match but the winner would have been tired. It’s a decent enough trick and I’m a bit surprised that a county would compete against itself in the semifinals.
  - pedrosorio 4y ago
    > I’m a bit surprised that a country would compete against itself in the semifinals What does that mean?
    - anamexis 4y ago
      TFA: > In an exclusive interview with TV 2 SPORT, the Chinese champion tells the whole story for the first time about what exactly happened 22 years ago at the Sydney Olympics, when she was instructed to take a dive in the semi-final against her compatriot, Gong Zhichao.
      - chihuahua 4y ago
        I think the question was - what alternative was there to 2 Chinese players competing in the semi-finals, when they were the 2 that had advanced to that semi-finals match? They couldn't just say "we refuse to compete."
        pseudo0 4y ago
        Per the bracket diagram in the article, out of the four players in the semi-finals, three were Chinese. So there was no way to avoid a match between two Chinese contenders. Unfortunately there isn't much that can be done in terms of tournament structure to avoid it when one nation's team is consistently strong.
slt2021 4y ago
I dont get this obsession with olympic gold medals from all these authoritarian and despotic regimes, that leads them to cheat and break rules in various ways. Do they consider gold medals as a sort of confirmation that their bloody regime is doing good ? I am talking about you china and ruzzia. IOC should ban china or let only one athlete/one pair of athletes compete
- selectodude 4y ago
  I know the USSR looked at Olympic golds as victory of the Soviet model over the west.
- abirch 4y ago
  As a reminder we vote with our dollars. Most people don't seem to care. I'd love it if Amazon or Target had a made in a democracy filter where it'd be easy to avoid supporting Winnie the Pooh directly or indirectly.
  - themaninthedark 4y ago
    I wish so to but it seems like our wonderful retail ~overlords~ giants are trying to find new and exciting ways to get us to buy as much cheaply produced goods from other countries rather than promote more expensive goods from at home. As we have transitioned our economy from having careers to jobs and from owning to financing, the cheap stuff is all we can afford. People still care but they just care more about surviving.
- thethimble 4y ago
  > Do they consider gold medals as a sort of confirmation that their bloody regime is doing good ? Of course. The Olympics have been a way to signal a country’s prowess for generations. https://apnews.com/article/sports-virus-outbreak-afghanistan-boycotts-cold-war-8b447c53e96621f1ca2b06e8621b351f https://apnews.com/article/sports-virus-outbreak-afghanistan...
- chmod775 4y ago
  > IOC should ban china or let only one athlete/one pair of athletes compete The IOC is a corrupt clusterfuck. I wouldn't be surprised if the IOC's involvement in these things went past just turning a blind eye.
derekzhouzhen 4y ago
In China, the goal is not to win gold medal for you, but for the country. The other girl has the higher win rate against the opponent at the final, so Ye was ordered to bunt.
- ausbah 4y ago
  I don't think most other countries are different. most countries have national training programs just for the olympics
- noobermin 4y ago
  I don't get it though, if Ye Zhaoying won over the other person with a higher win rate, that means she's better and can make it into the final on her own merits, no? If Gong Zhichao couldn't win a match against Ye Zhaoying, then they might not even win against Camilla Martin.
  - pedrosorio 4y ago
    Rock, paper, scissors
    - oconnor663 4y ago
      That plus your chosen player doesn't get as tired. (The article mentions both reasons.)
    - noobermin 4y ago
      If it is due to chance then how is the final match not equally due to chance?
      - pedrosorio 4y ago
        Plenty of people have already explained my point. The analogy with rock-paper-scissors is not that it's "due to chance". A player being "better" than another one is not a transitive property. In many games, due to different play styles you can have A>B, B>C and C>A, just like in rock-paper-scissors.
targ65 4y ago
Olympic sports medals is a vain metric that all it does is hide the fact that authoriterian regimes are destroying their countries and pressing their people. In the Ancient Greek times the Olympic Games were an opportunities for friends an enemies to come together and have FUN! It wasn't about who won the most medals. Can you imagine if Sparta and Athens were competing for the highest number of golds? Pathetic. But that's what's happening today.
- mtrpcic 4y ago
  It might be a vain metric in the aggregate, but to an individual, the people who are passionate about their sport and have worked nearly their entire lives to become the best at it across the entire globe, it's an accomplishment that is nearly incomparable.
  - butUhmErm 4y ago
  - derefr 4y ago
    Maybe we could have our cake and eat it too: award medals privately. In fact, do all the scoring privately. All the public (and the countries) get is a spectacle. If your country so much as runs a news story afterward about what kind of medal your guy came back with, you’re banned from ever coming back to the Olympics. Only the participant gets to know how they did. (Yes, this is prima facie ridiculous. But also kind of fun to imagine.)
- robinsoh 4y ago
  > In the Ancient Greek times the Olympic Games were an opportunities for friends an enemies to come together and have FUN! Not sure if you're being serious or being sarcastic. Any evidence for your claim? The ancient Olympics (as the name itself implies!) is about religion. Olympus! Violence, murder, corruption was part of it. Perhaps as much as it is today. "Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans." "In 67, the Roman Emperor Nero competed in the chariot race at Olympia. He was thrown from his chariot and was thus unable to finish the race. Nevertheless, he was declared the winner on the basis that he would have won if he had finished the race."
pphysch 4y ago
user- 4y ago
Interesting article, I read the whole thing but this little paragraph at the end stood out to me. > According to the Chinese sports couple, they still own more than ten properties in China, probably worth more than EUR 135 million, and Hao Haidong is the co-owner of several companies. Thats a lot of money tied up in China for people banned from it. I looked up Hao Haidong's wiki and looks like theyre heavily affiliated with Steve Bannon and the absolutely ridiculous group New Federal State of China. Mind you, im not saying this article is wrong. I 100% believe she was treated unfairly and made to throw the match. And im not pro-china by anymeans. But like.. anytime I see Bannon or NFSC or GTV, I just know theres a grift involved.
- draw_down 4y ago
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- chihuahua 4y ago
  Sounds like a bit of a "milkshake duck" story: "Look at these 2 nice people, how sad that they're forced to live in exile. Oh no , they're affiliated with Steve Bannon."
  - ummonk 4y ago
    It's more "there are much bigger reasons they're considered traitors than talking about throwing matches".
- golemiprague 4y ago
xiaq 4y ago
FWIW, Ye's story has been reported on Chinese media since at least 2007: https://web.archive.org/web/20170309082422/http://sports.sohu.com/20071116/n253284057.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20170309082422/http://sports.soh.... Unfortunately Google Translate doesn't seem to work on wayback machine, but you can copy paste the text. Funnily enough, at least in this particular report, it is her coach who told the story. Really shows how this behavior was normalized enough for it not to be considered too shameful to admit. The reason Ye and her husband are persona non grata is unrelated to the Olympic incident, but because her husband is involved in the "New Federal State of China" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Federal_State_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Federal_State_of_China). Supposedly this is what the "fierce criticism" the article is referring to.
- noobermin 4y ago
  That's fine, but it should be fine and possible to criticize someone for their actions yet acknowledge their past sports achievements. It sounds like the Chinese media has chosen to forget their achievements.
  - xiaq 4y ago
    I don't intend to criticize Ye. Her story deserves to be known regardless of whether it's been reported before or any of her possible involvement in fringe political groups.
    - noobermin 4y ago
      To be clear, I'm not talking about you specifically, I'm talking about the media and online company response to her, at least that which is alledged in the article.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Chinese media is simply a state propaganda organ. You're not going to get accurate, nuanced reporting from them without a regime change.
tsol 4y ago
Sad. I wonder how many of these stories have went on behind the scenes without anyone coming out about it
- UberFly 4y ago
  Considering cheating is practically an Olympics tradition even going back to ancient Greece, I'd guess a TON. Sad but true. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-history-cheating-olympics-180960003/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-history-cheat...
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
>However, the fixed match also brought with it big losers: the rules of the game, justice and the Olympic spirit. Anyone who has watched Olympic boxing over the years knows that "the rules of the game, justice and the Olympic spirit" have always been non-existent.
- netsharc 4y ago
  "Olympic spirit" seemed to have died a long time ago, or at least have been engulfed in the spirit of "let's make money!". The IOC is (imo) not an honorable organization, remember them defending China's other actions like the disappearing of the tennis player who had a seemingly-not-100%-consensual sex with the vice premier?
nine_k 4y ago
Here we have a sad story how Goodhart's Law overcame the Olympic spirit. The count of gold medals became more important than fair play, honestly finding out who is the best, etc. "If you cannot win cleanly, just win" (quoting from memory).
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Brings to mind: “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough.”
chernevik 4y ago
Is this that big a deal? I dislike the Chinese Communist Party, but in sport players sacrifice wins and position for stronger teammates all the time. It's routine in F1 and the Tour de France. The cases aren't entirely comparable. F1 drivers and Tour de France racers are highly compensated and they go into races knowing the strategy. Being compelled to lose against your will by your national organization sucks. On the other hand, I expect she went into the Chinese badminton team with some idea that this sort of thing might happen.
- thomasahle 4y ago
  It everybody is interested in the Olympics as a battle between nations. It's supposed to be about finding the best individual athlete. Clearly not everyone sees it like that.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    It has been about nations from the start. Nations deciding who will be representing them, and the nation anthem playing on the podium are the most visible side, there's many declarations from the founder to the same effect.
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      If it truly was individual competition. Nations would not matter in qualifying, there would be unlimited slots for nations if their athletes were good enough.
      - makeitdouble 4y ago
        Which is basically each sport's yearly world championship, as far as I know. Honestly, instead of trying to improve or tweak the Olympics, straight getting rid of them would help in basically all fronts: no more debt ridden hosting country, no crazy corruptions schemes flying all around, other events an keep their sheer sport focus, centered on the athletes and not where they register their passport. We'd keep events like the Eurovision for the festive and "your nation is worse than mine" parts. It would all be fine.
AndyJado 4y ago
maybe someone explain 田忌赛马
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holografix 4y ago
Communists will commune
AndyJado 4y ago
maybe someone could explain 田忌赛马?
- deleted 4y ago
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- syockit 4y ago
  Here's an article for that: https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/10/17/tian-jis-horse-racing-strategy-an-ancient-chinese-story-based-on-game-theory/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/10/17/tian-jis-horse...
aynyc 4y ago
Olympic has always been about country and its medal counts. If it’s about best player to win, then they need to change the qualification rules for the sports.
- labster 4y ago
  What the Olympics is about has always been subject to debate. The tension between its modernist ideals and realpolitik was present at the start, with individualist and postmodern criticisms joining the chat later. It’s hard to imagine some starting a similar institution today, but it seems at least somewhat effective at its goal of world peace, if only by giving nations an easy, institutionalized way to gain prestige without going to war.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    > gain prestige without going to war. Has war ever been about prestige ?
    - haimez 4y ago
      No, it hasn’t- the Olympics have never been a substitute for war. They have however been a great way for peaceful nations to promote themselves economically for tourism during and after the event- although not for a while with the IOCC and Olympic hosting becoming a massive opportunity for corrupt boondoggles. Even so, host country aside, the international event has created the opportunity to raise awareness and create good will towards nations that otherwise wouldn’t have any similar opportunity- the Jamaican bobsled team comes to mind.
      - deleted 4y ago
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    - labster 4y ago
      The Crusades seem an obvious example. Why endeavor to conquer coastal desert a thousand kilometers from your kingdom instead of your neighbor’s farmland and mines. The Trojan war was about a single woman and her prestige. And WWII had fascist ideologies that were centered on proving to the world how great they were, and the proved more important than the economic motives in actually starting the war.
ManWith2Plans 4y ago
This reminds me of when Rubens Barichello stopped at the side of the road to let Michael Schumacher pass him in Austrian Grand Prix in 2002: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/austria-2002-ferrari-team-orders/4791321/ https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/austria-2002-ferrari-team...
- mertd 4y ago
  That's considered part of the team strategy in F1 to maximize the chances of getting both drivers and constructors championships. Team orders of this kind are issued at almost every race.
  - sh4rks 4y ago
    Seems like a fundamental flaw in the sport then
    - thematrixturtle 4y ago
      We don't consider it a "flaw" in soccer when one player passes the ball to another so they can score, and F1 blurs the line because there are both teams and individual standings. In singles badminton, though, it's supposed to be all about individual performance.
      - pnt12 4y ago
        Quite frankly, it's an absurd comparison, and I'm not even a fan of sports. A football team does not have a fraction of its players qualified to participate in a championship. There is no podium. The goalie is doing a completely different job from the striker. There are team races, eg rowing, where one person cannot win and the other lose. From what I see, F1 and other races are individual races! It just happens that individuals belong to the same organization, and therefore the organization forces some logistics shenanigans that go against the sport.
  - slim 4y ago
    it's exactly the same thing. if f1 is considered to be a team sport, then badminton too
registeredcorn 4y ago
https://archive.ph/36lnI https://archive.ph/36lnI
istillwritecode 4y ago
A perfect reminder of what a shitshow the web has become.
imwillofficial 4y ago
This type of calculated planning will be why China is the next super power.
- UberFly 4y ago
  Riding your lack of ethics to the top doesn't always work out as planned.
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    This sounds nice, and is so vague as to be unfalsifiable, but what exactly do you mean? The current world super power is guilty of far far worse than arranging Olympic athletes like chess pieces.
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thrdbndndn 4y ago
This is not even the most famous case of such practice in China, which goes to He Zhili [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Zhili https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Zhili The gist is that she was ordered to lose in one World Table Tennis Championships, but refused and proceeded to be the champion. Later she wasn't selected for the next Olympic, which she felt was the punishment for her disobedience. She later immigrated to Japan and played for their national team and gave China some trouble for a while. There is also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_doubles#Group_stage_disqualifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2012_Summer_O... The funny thing is, they do that in table tennis (actually also badminton in some other cases other than the one in the article) not even just to secure the gold medal: since China is/was so dominant in this sport, they sometimes do it to ensure certain player can get his/her "grand slam" [2] (to win all the major tournaments in their career). [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_tennis#Notable_players https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_tennis#Notable_players
- jxramos 4y ago
  I'm curious why would they have an interest in a particular player ever getting a grand slam?
  - thrdbndndn 4y ago
    I guess it's simply an honor to have, and if you (the country) are going to win anyway, why not? Keep in mind it's not any "particular" individual, everyone take turns. So if you're "close", you have the priority. If you already have one? Well you can try to not push so hard. And it's not like it happens all the time, just in a few cases. It's still largely merit-based especially for things like Olympics trial, you have to earn it no matter who you are.
  - archsurface 4y ago
    To create a national superhero.
  - shakna 4y ago
    It's a regular thing in other sports, as well. The number of times it has caused controversy in Formula-One, with a safety driver told to lose, is probably not even worth counting. (Everyone does it, but they're not supposed to). It has something to do with prestige and respect, often enforced by the team owner. Lewis Hamilton made his first huge win by ignoring such an instruction.
jononomo 4y ago
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ummonk 4y ago
I would have assumed this is normal strategizing for countries to do in sports, though perhaps without the same level of coercion? Obviously you want your strongest athlete to compete and you want them to get an easy win instead of tiring them out. Teams certainly do such strategizing in sports like cycling.
noisy_boy 4y ago
Those saying that this is normal since Olympics is about country and medal counts, the main issue is the absurdly disproportionate repercussions that were inflicted on the athlete (and her husband too) for speaking about the strategy - that, ironically, is being described as "normal". If it is normal, why they had to suffer the consequences for telling it like it is?
- dncornholio 4y ago
  Nobody is saying that this is normal?
aluksi 4y ago
O it's China! Normal rules of civilization don't apply.
kingkawn 4y ago
I thought the point of having teams in Olympic events was to be able to make strategic decisions like this
- yomkippur 4y ago
  Somebody made millions of dollars by rigging the olympics like this. Sports betting on dozens of off-shore locations. Really crazy how much influence some people have.
quadrifoliate 4y ago
I am a little surprised at how some people in the comments seem to have never heard about this sort of thing before. It is...not that uncommon, even at high levels of sport. For example, in the "Disgrace of Gijón" [1] incident in the 1982 FIFA (Soccer) World Cup, Austria were accused of throwing a match to West Germany so both teams could advance; leading FIFA to change the schedules to prevent this from happening again (or at least make it more difficult). ---------------------------------------- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n
- smcl 4y ago
  The Austria/Germany farce in Spain was much different though. Two teams effectively agreed on a result to ensure they both went through at the expense of Algeria. Then not only did the world at large (including German and Austrian fans) turn against the teams, but as you say FIFA recognised it and acted against it. In this case a single person was ordered by a powerful government to self-sacrifice with the knowledge that if she didn't her career was effectively over - you know China wouldn't think twice about pulling her funding, or choose not to select her again. They're both very disappointing cases, but one had a very real consequence for the people and the sport involved - the other seemingly continues unabated.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    You're judging it on the outcome level, which is fair I guess - the soccer one probably had a better outcome for fairness. Although these days with live telecasts and such, you could probably still cheat in a similar manner with knowledge of how the other game is going. Considering the number of people involved in the cheating though, it seems to me that the Austria/Germany one is much worse? Two entire squads, or at least the 11 players + substitutes unanimously agreed to cheat; whereas in the China badminton case it was a couple of players and presumably at most four or five coaches and selectors above them.
    - smcl 4y ago
      I don't think there's any objective way to say whether one is worse than the other, so this totally boils down to what parts of the respective scandals annoy any one person the most. That said, I'm not 100% convinced the number of people involved (22 players + some coaches vs 2 players + coaches) contributes either way to badness. But now that you mention outcome, I'm thinking again from the perspective of the Algerian team rather than the sport itself. They could've been the first African nation to make it out of the group stages of the world cup but were denied it by a third party, whereas I suppose at least in the Badminton case the player had some kind of agency (even if it was unlikely they'd choose not to obey the instruction to throw the game). So I'm coming around to the idea that Austria/Germany was actually worse :D To add a lukewarm ending to the tale, Algeria eventually managed to make it out of the World Cup group stages in Brazil in 2014. Unfortunately they faced an in-form Germany and lost 2-1 after extra time. Germany would go on to win the competition, completely destroying Brazil 7-1 on the way, so Algeria maybe don't feel so hard done by that time.
dartharva 4y ago
> In this context, the previous national footballer also mentions that their public statements have caused both friends and close family to turn their backs on the couple. > “My parents have said, ‘Hao is no longer part of this family’.” > Ye Zhaoying interrupts and says that both her daughter and her father back home in China are furious with her. > “My father always says that I should live my life and stop talking about the Chinese government. They’re firmly against what we’re doing.” This is just so sad, her family probably didn't even have much choice in the matter. Either disown the deviant or face punishment for her speech.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  > her family probably didn't even have much choice in the matter. Either disown the deviant or face punishment for her speech. That is an optimistic take. Chinese previous generations I've known in my circle are also stepped in the genuine belief of filial piety and national loyalty.
verisimi 4y ago
sfg 4y ago
Restrict each country to one competitor.
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  The problem with easy solutions is that they aren't solutions, and they aren't easy. It is massively unfair to a top athlete to not being allowed to compete because he's the second best in India, or China, or the United States, when a much lower-ranked athlete from, say, Burkina Faso is allowed to run merely because of their nationality.
  - sfg 4y ago
    The principle of open contest* avoids the problem you cite. Such a problem is inherent to international competition*. The mixture of limited open competition (multiple entries per country) introduces a fault into the system, which corrupts the contest at the highest level as detailed in the article. You make it less likely the best of anywhere will win, so that the second best of somewhere can compete. If you accept the competitive principle that is inherent to the entire design, then the problem goes away. But yeah, I know most people won't accept this. That is cool. They'll continue to enjoy the Olympics; I'll continue to ignore it. * In principle, I think a contest that aims to be the pinnacle of a sport, as the Olympics events do generally aim (Association Football being an exception), should be an open contest. However, I'm not sure if an Olympics that was formally open would actually be treated as anything other than effectively an international contest. Still, maybe open would be better (I'd be happy to see it tried), but it is not hard to see that it might cause issues of its own. * in international competition, it is probably not even fair to consider it a problem, as it is really just an accepted part of such systems.
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      Technically, the Olympics are considered an open event - while you are supposed to compete under your country's flag (more specifically: under your country's NOC), there is a process in place for when this is not possible[1]. The problem with the Olympics is a different one - an organisation that creates a highly complex event with construction and travel is dependant on national governments to support it (even if there is no corruption involved) - and that will invariably lead to said countries doing it for the prestige. I guess the only way around that would be setting up permanent Olympic venues and giving them a status like the UN General Assembly building [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_Olympic_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_O...
dncornholio 4y ago
Boxing has a few blatant examples as well: 1. Roy Jones Jr. - Park Si-Heon 1988 2. Floyd Mayweather - Serafim Todorov 1996 3. Michael Conlan - Vladimir Nikitin 2016 4. Evander Holyfield - Kevin Barry 1984 5. Anthony Joshua - Erislandy Savón 2012 Boxing is probably the most rotten thing of the whole Olympics.
aljgz 4y ago
Iranian athletes have been dealing with this nightmare: if in an international competition they face a competitor from Israel, they will be told that they have to avoid competing. This is part of Iran's Islamic government's symbolic gesture to show that they do not recognize a country by that name, and so their representatives do not compete against them. This has caused a huge amount of damage on these athletes' professional lives. Imagine an Olympic competition, you might be in the right shape to compete in the Olympic only once, and you miss that not by your chance. No officials in Iran take the responsibility of this decision, no one knows what institute forces athletes to abandon their competition, but this continues. Many of top athletes migrate to other countries (usually just stay in the country they are for the competition as refugees, and do not come back with the team, then they move to another country) for a chance to compete free from this restriction.
thrwyoilarticle 4y ago
>They came to tell me that I had to lose, and they would give me the same reward of a EUR 21,500 bonus Nice! Here you have to spend 6 weeks at a coding camp and join a company developing CRUD apps to make that kind of bonus.
paganel 4y ago
That Chinese athlete joined the Olympics as member of the Chinese Badminton Team, with the focus on "team". If the team's coaches decided that her opponent in the semis had better chances to beat the Danish lady (the only other non-Chinese athlete left in the semis) then what happened here is indeed right for the Chinese team as a whole. As it happens, the Danish lady was defeated in the final by the Chinese athlete chosen by the Chinese coaches to play against her, so it seems that the coach's action was the correct one for the Chinese Badminton Team.
BrandoElFollito 4y ago
This is the kind of things that bother me in current sport. Not that it is a business with backstabbing, just that we paint it as clean and magnificent. An elite athlete also does not have anything to do with the average Joe out Jane, so let's stop pretending about health and normality. I played volleyball for my uni, it was a nightmare and I gave up because of the stress and lack of fun. I then played in "business league" and our team was dreadful. We were always messy but this was pure fun and joy. The other teams knew we were bad and they we would loose, so they played cool, had fun with combinations that they would not risk with other teams etc. We usually ended with 4 or 5 sets because everyone wanted the match to last. And then beer afterwards (I arranged for special funding because we were always the ones to buy the first round...). We had the only mixed team (and thanks god, because the girls were systematically saving the team's ass) This is what I call real, fun, great sport.

479 points by danskeren 4y ago

Have a re-match in not China between the two without any other crap if for no other reason than to heal the spiritual damage done by the Chinese Olympic mafia.

not2b 4y ago
Can't happen. The winner would have to go into exile from China to participate, and both are about double the age now and no longer play competitively (the thrown match was 22 years ago).
bombcar 4y ago
The outcome may have been the same from the thrown match but the winner would have been tired. It’s a decent enough trick and I’m a bit surprised that a county would compete against itself in the semifinals.
- pedrosorio 4y ago
  > I’m a bit surprised that a country would compete against itself in the semifinals What does that mean?
  - anamexis 4y ago
    TFA: > In an exclusive interview with TV 2 SPORT, the Chinese champion tells the whole story for the first time about what exactly happened 22 years ago at the Sydney Olympics, when she was instructed to take a dive in the semi-final against her compatriot, Gong Zhichao.
    - chihuahua 4y ago
      I think the question was - what alternative was there to 2 Chinese players competing in the semi-finals, when they were the 2 that had advanced to that semi-finals match? They couldn't just say "we refuse to compete."
      - pseudo0 4y ago
        Per the bracket diagram in the article, out of the four players in the semi-finals, three were Chinese. So there was no way to avoid a match between two Chinese contenders. Unfortunately there isn't much that can be done in terms of tournament structure to avoid it when one nation's team is consistently strong.

slt2021 4y ago

I dont get this obsession with olympic gold medals from all these authoritarian and despotic regimes, that leads them to cheat and break rules in various ways. Do they consider gold medals as a sort of confirmation that their bloody regime is doing good ? I am talking about you china and ruzzia. IOC should ban china or let only one athlete/one pair of athletes compete

selectodude 4y ago
I know the USSR looked at Olympic golds as victory of the Soviet model over the west.
abirch 4y ago
As a reminder we vote with our dollars. Most people don't seem to care. I'd love it if Amazon or Target had a made in a democracy filter where it'd be easy to avoid supporting Winnie the Pooh directly or indirectly.
- themaninthedark 4y ago
  I wish so to but it seems like our wonderful retail ~overlords~ giants are trying to find new and exciting ways to get us to buy as much cheaply produced goods from other countries rather than promote more expensive goods from at home. As we have transitioned our economy from having careers to jobs and from owning to financing, the cheap stuff is all we can afford. People still care but they just care more about surviving.
thethimble 4y ago
> Do they consider gold medals as a sort of confirmation that their bloody regime is doing good ? Of course. The Olympics have been a way to signal a country’s prowess for generations. https://apnews.com/article/sports-virus-outbreak-afghanistan-boycotts-cold-war-8b447c53e96621f1ca2b06e8621b351f https://apnews.com/article/sports-virus-outbreak-afghanistan...
chmod775 4y ago
> IOC should ban china or let only one athlete/one pair of athletes compete The IOC is a corrupt clusterfuck. I wouldn't be surprised if the IOC's involvement in these things went past just turning a blind eye.

derekzhouzhen 4y ago

In China, the goal is not to win gold medal for you, but for the country. The other girl has the higher win rate against the opponent at the final, so Ye was ordered to bunt.

ausbah 4y ago
I don't think most other countries are different. most countries have national training programs just for the olympics
noobermin 4y ago
I don't get it though, if Ye Zhaoying won over the other person with a higher win rate, that means she's better and can make it into the final on her own merits, no? If Gong Zhichao couldn't win a match against Ye Zhaoying, then they might not even win against Camilla Martin.
- pedrosorio 4y ago
  Rock, paper, scissors
  - oconnor663 4y ago
    That plus your chosen player doesn't get as tired. (The article mentions both reasons.)
  - noobermin 4y ago
    If it is due to chance then how is the final match not equally due to chance?
    - pedrosorio 4y ago
      Plenty of people have already explained my point. The analogy with rock-paper-scissors is not that it's "due to chance". A player being "better" than another one is not a transitive property. In many games, due to different play styles you can have A>B, B>C and C>A, just like in rock-paper-scissors.

targ65 4y ago

Olympic sports medals is a vain metric that all it does is hide the fact that authoriterian regimes are destroying their countries and pressing their people. In the Ancient Greek times the Olympic Games were an opportunities for friends an enemies to come together and have FUN! It wasn't about who won the most medals. Can you imagine if Sparta and Athens were competing for the highest number of golds? Pathetic. But that's what's happening today.

mtrpcic 4y ago
It might be a vain metric in the aggregate, but to an individual, the people who are passionate about their sport and have worked nearly their entire lives to become the best at it across the entire globe, it's an accomplishment that is nearly incomparable.
- butUhmErm 4y ago
- derefr 4y ago
  Maybe we could have our cake and eat it too: award medals privately. In fact, do all the scoring privately. All the public (and the countries) get is a spectacle. If your country so much as runs a news story afterward about what kind of medal your guy came back with, you’re banned from ever coming back to the Olympics. Only the participant gets to know how they did. (Yes, this is prima facie ridiculous. But also kind of fun to imagine.)
robinsoh 4y ago
> In the Ancient Greek times the Olympic Games were an opportunities for friends an enemies to come together and have FUN! Not sure if you're being serious or being sarcastic. Any evidence for your claim? The ancient Olympics (as the name itself implies!) is about religion. Olympus! Violence, murder, corruption was part of it. Perhaps as much as it is today. "Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans." "In 67, the Roman Emperor Nero competed in the chariot race at Olympia. He was thrown from his chariot and was thus unable to finish the race. Nevertheless, he was declared the winner on the basis that he would have won if he had finished the race."

pphysch 4y ago

user- 4y ago

Interesting article, I read the whole thing but this little paragraph at the end stood out to me. > According to the Chinese sports couple, they still own more than ten properties in China, probably worth more than EUR 135 million, and Hao Haidong is the co-owner of several companies. Thats a lot of money tied up in China for people banned from it. I looked up Hao Haidong's wiki and looks like theyre heavily affiliated with Steve Bannon and the absolutely ridiculous group New Federal State of China. Mind you, im not saying this article is wrong. I 100% believe she was treated unfairly and made to throw the match. And im not pro-china by anymeans. But like.. anytime I see Bannon or NFSC or GTV, I just know theres a grift involved.

draw_down 4y ago
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chihuahua 4y ago
Sounds like a bit of a "milkshake duck" story: "Look at these 2 nice people, how sad that they're forced to live in exile. Oh no , they're affiliated with Steve Bannon."
- ummonk 4y ago
  It's more "there are much bigger reasons they're considered traitors than talking about throwing matches".
golemiprague 4y ago

xiaq 4y ago

FWIW, Ye's story has been reported on Chinese media since at least 2007: https://web.archive.org/web/20170309082422/http://sports.sohu.com/20071116/n253284057.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20170309082422/http://sports.soh.... Unfortunately Google Translate doesn't seem to work on wayback machine, but you can copy paste the text. Funnily enough, at least in this particular report, it is her coach who told the story. Really shows how this behavior was normalized enough for it not to be considered too shameful to admit. The reason Ye and her husband are persona non grata is unrelated to the Olympic incident, but because her husband is involved in the "New Federal State of China" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Federal_State_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Federal_State_of_China). Supposedly this is what the "fierce criticism" the article is referring to.

noobermin 4y ago
That's fine, but it should be fine and possible to criticize someone for their actions yet acknowledge their past sports achievements. It sounds like the Chinese media has chosen to forget their achievements.
- xiaq 4y ago
  I don't intend to criticize Ye. Her story deserves to be known regardless of whether it's been reported before or any of her possible involvement in fringe political groups.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    To be clear, I'm not talking about you specifically, I'm talking about the media and online company response to her, at least that which is alledged in the article.
- nradov 4y ago
  Chinese media is simply a state propaganda organ. You're not going to get accurate, nuanced reporting from them without a regime change.

tsol 4y ago

Sad. I wonder how many of these stories have went on behind the scenes without anyone coming out about it

UberFly 4y ago
Considering cheating is practically an Olympics tradition even going back to ancient Greece, I'd guess a TON. Sad but true. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-history-cheating-olympics-180960003/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-history-cheat...

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

>However, the fixed match also brought with it big losers: the rules of the game, justice and the Olympic spirit. Anyone who has watched Olympic boxing over the years knows that "the rules of the game, justice and the Olympic spirit" have always been non-existent.

netsharc 4y ago
"Olympic spirit" seemed to have died a long time ago, or at least have been engulfed in the spirit of "let's make money!". The IOC is (imo) not an honorable organization, remember them defending China's other actions like the disappearing of the tennis player who had a seemingly-not-100%-consensual sex with the vice premier?

nine_k 4y ago

Here we have a sad story how Goodhart's Law overcame the Olympic spirit. The count of gold medals became more important than fair play, honestly finding out who is the best, etc. "If you cannot win cleanly, just win" (quoting from memory).

kayodelycaon 4y ago
Brings to mind: “If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

chernevik 4y ago

Is this that big a deal? I dislike the Chinese Communist Party, but in sport players sacrifice wins and position for stronger teammates all the time. It's routine in F1 and the Tour de France. The cases aren't entirely comparable. F1 drivers and Tour de France racers are highly compensated and they go into races knowing the strategy. Being compelled to lose against your will by your national organization sucks. On the other hand, I expect she went into the Chinese badminton team with some idea that this sort of thing might happen.

thomasahle 4y ago
It everybody is interested in the Olympics as a battle between nations. It's supposed to be about finding the best individual athlete. Clearly not everyone sees it like that.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  It has been about nations from the start. Nations deciding who will be representing them, and the nation anthem playing on the podium are the most visible side, there's many declarations from the founder to the same effect.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    If it truly was individual competition. Nations would not matter in qualifying, there would be unlimited slots for nations if their athletes were good enough.
    - makeitdouble 4y ago
      Which is basically each sport's yearly world championship, as far as I know. Honestly, instead of trying to improve or tweak the Olympics, straight getting rid of them would help in basically all fronts: no more debt ridden hosting country, no crazy corruptions schemes flying all around, other events an keep their sheer sport focus, centered on the athletes and not where they register their passport. We'd keep events like the Eurovision for the festive and "your nation is worse than mine" parts. It would all be fine.

AndyJado 4y ago

maybe someone explain 田忌赛马

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holografix 4y ago

Communists will commune

AndyJado 4y ago

maybe someone could explain 田忌赛马?

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syockit 4y ago
Here's an article for that: https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/10/17/tian-jis-horse-racing-strategy-an-ancient-chinese-story-based-on-game-theory/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2018/10/17/tian-jis-horse...

aynyc 4y ago

Olympic has always been about country and its medal counts. If it’s about best player to win, then they need to change the qualification rules for the sports.

labster 4y ago
What the Olympics is about has always been subject to debate. The tension between its modernist ideals and realpolitik was present at the start, with individualist and postmodern criticisms joining the chat later. It’s hard to imagine some starting a similar institution today, but it seems at least somewhat effective at its goal of world peace, if only by giving nations an easy, institutionalized way to gain prestige without going to war.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > gain prestige without going to war. Has war ever been about prestige ?
  - haimez 4y ago
    No, it hasn’t- the Olympics have never been a substitute for war. They have however been a great way for peaceful nations to promote themselves economically for tourism during and after the event- although not for a while with the IOCC and Olympic hosting becoming a massive opportunity for corrupt boondoggles. Even so, host country aside, the international event has created the opportunity to raise awareness and create good will towards nations that otherwise wouldn’t have any similar opportunity- the Jamaican bobsled team comes to mind.
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  - labster 4y ago
    The Crusades seem an obvious example. Why endeavor to conquer coastal desert a thousand kilometers from your kingdom instead of your neighbor’s farmland and mines. The Trojan war was about a single woman and her prestige. And WWII had fascist ideologies that were centered on proving to the world how great they were, and the proved more important than the economic motives in actually starting the war.

ManWith2Plans 4y ago

This reminds me of when Rubens Barichello stopped at the side of the road to let Michael Schumacher pass him in Austrian Grand Prix in 2002: https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/austria-2002-ferrari-team-orders/4791321/ https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/austria-2002-ferrari-team...

mertd 4y ago
That's considered part of the team strategy in F1 to maximize the chances of getting both drivers and constructors championships. Team orders of this kind are issued at almost every race.
- sh4rks 4y ago
  Seems like a fundamental flaw in the sport then
  - thematrixturtle 4y ago
    We don't consider it a "flaw" in soccer when one player passes the ball to another so they can score, and F1 blurs the line because there are both teams and individual standings. In singles badminton, though, it's supposed to be all about individual performance.
    - pnt12 4y ago
      Quite frankly, it's an absurd comparison, and I'm not even a fan of sports. A football team does not have a fraction of its players qualified to participate in a championship. There is no podium. The goalie is doing a completely different job from the striker. There are team races, eg rowing, where one person cannot win and the other lose. From what I see, F1 and other races are individual races! It just happens that individuals belong to the same organization, and therefore the organization forces some logistics shenanigans that go against the sport.
- slim 4y ago
  it's exactly the same thing. if f1 is considered to be a team sport, then badminton too

registeredcorn 4y ago

https://archive.ph/36lnI https://archive.ph/36lnI

istillwritecode 4y ago

A perfect reminder of what a shitshow the web has become.

imwillofficial 4y ago

This type of calculated planning will be why China is the next super power.

UberFly 4y ago
Riding your lack of ethics to the top doesn't always work out as planned.
- imwillofficial 4y ago
  This sounds nice, and is so vague as to be unfalsifiable, but what exactly do you mean? The current world super power is guilty of far far worse than arranging Olympic athletes like chess pieces.
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thrdbndndn 4y ago

This is not even the most famous case of such practice in China, which goes to He Zhili [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Zhili https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Zhili The gist is that she was ordered to lose in one World Table Tennis Championships, but refused and proceeded to be the champion. Later she wasn't selected for the next Olympic, which she felt was the punishment for her disobedience. She later immigrated to Japan and played for their national team and gave China some trouble for a while. There is also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_doubles#Group_stage_disqualifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2012_Summer_O... The funny thing is, they do that in table tennis (actually also badminton in some other cases other than the one in the article) not even just to secure the gold medal: since China is/was so dominant in this sport, they sometimes do it to ensure certain player can get his/her "grand slam" [2] (to win all the major tournaments in their career). [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_tennis#Notable_players https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_tennis#Notable_players

jxramos 4y ago
I'm curious why would they have an interest in a particular player ever getting a grand slam?
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  I guess it's simply an honor to have, and if you (the country) are going to win anyway, why not? Keep in mind it's not any "particular" individual, everyone take turns. So if you're "close", you have the priority. If you already have one? Well you can try to not push so hard. And it's not like it happens all the time, just in a few cases. It's still largely merit-based especially for things like Olympics trial, you have to earn it no matter who you are.
- archsurface 4y ago
  To create a national superhero.
- shakna 4y ago
  It's a regular thing in other sports, as well. The number of times it has caused controversy in Formula-One, with a safety driver told to lose, is probably not even worth counting. (Everyone does it, but they're not supposed to). It has something to do with prestige and respect, often enforced by the team owner. Lewis Hamilton made his first huge win by ignoring such an instruction.

jononomo 4y ago

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ummonk 4y ago

I would have assumed this is normal strategizing for countries to do in sports, though perhaps without the same level of coercion? Obviously you want your strongest athlete to compete and you want them to get an easy win instead of tiring them out. Teams certainly do such strategizing in sports like cycling.

noisy_boy 4y ago

Those saying that this is normal since Olympics is about country and medal counts, the main issue is the absurdly disproportionate repercussions that were inflicted on the athlete (and her husband too) for speaking about the strategy - that, ironically, is being described as "normal". If it is normal, why they had to suffer the consequences for telling it like it is?

dncornholio 4y ago
Nobody is saying that this is normal?

aluksi 4y ago

O it's China! Normal rules of civilization don't apply.

kingkawn 4y ago

I thought the point of having teams in Olympic events was to be able to make strategic decisions like this

yomkippur 4y ago
Somebody made millions of dollars by rigging the olympics like this. Sports betting on dozens of off-shore locations. Really crazy how much influence some people have.

quadrifoliate 4y ago

I am a little surprised at how some people in the comments seem to have never heard about this sort of thing before. It is...not that uncommon, even at high levels of sport. For example, in the "Disgrace of Gijón" [1] incident in the 1982 FIFA (Soccer) World Cup, Austria were accused of throwing a match to West Germany so both teams could advance; leading FIFA to change the schedules to prevent this from happening again (or at least make it more difficult). ---------------------------------------- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gij%C3%B3n

smcl 4y ago
The Austria/Germany farce in Spain was much different though. Two teams effectively agreed on a result to ensure they both went through at the expense of Algeria. Then not only did the world at large (including German and Austrian fans) turn against the teams, but as you say FIFA recognised it and acted against it. In this case a single person was ordered by a powerful government to self-sacrifice with the knowledge that if she didn't her career was effectively over - you know China wouldn't think twice about pulling her funding, or choose not to select her again. They're both very disappointing cases, but one had a very real consequence for the people and the sport involved - the other seemingly continues unabated.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  You're judging it on the outcome level, which is fair I guess - the soccer one probably had a better outcome for fairness. Although these days with live telecasts and such, you could probably still cheat in a similar manner with knowledge of how the other game is going. Considering the number of people involved in the cheating though, it seems to me that the Austria/Germany one is much worse? Two entire squads, or at least the 11 players + substitutes unanimously agreed to cheat; whereas in the China badminton case it was a couple of players and presumably at most four or five coaches and selectors above them.
  - smcl 4y ago
    I don't think there's any objective way to say whether one is worse than the other, so this totally boils down to what parts of the respective scandals annoy any one person the most. That said, I'm not 100% convinced the number of people involved (22 players + some coaches vs 2 players + coaches) contributes either way to badness. But now that you mention outcome, I'm thinking again from the perspective of the Algerian team rather than the sport itself. They could've been the first African nation to make it out of the group stages of the world cup but were denied it by a third party, whereas I suppose at least in the Badminton case the player had some kind of agency (even if it was unlikely they'd choose not to obey the instruction to throw the game). So I'm coming around to the idea that Austria/Germany was actually worse :D To add a lukewarm ending to the tale, Algeria eventually managed to make it out of the World Cup group stages in Brazil in 2014. Unfortunately they faced an in-form Germany and lost 2-1 after extra time. Germany would go on to win the competition, completely destroying Brazil 7-1 on the way, so Algeria maybe don't feel so hard done by that time.

dartharva 4y ago

> In this context, the previous national footballer also mentions that their public statements have caused both friends and close family to turn their backs on the couple. > “My parents have said, ‘Hao is no longer part of this family’.” > Ye Zhaoying interrupts and says that both her daughter and her father back home in China are furious with her. > “My father always says that I should live my life and stop talking about the Chinese government. They’re firmly against what we’re doing.” This is just so sad, her family probably didn't even have much choice in the matter. Either disown the deviant or face punishment for her speech.

hackernewds 4y ago
> her family probably didn't even have much choice in the matter. Either disown the deviant or face punishment for her speech. That is an optimistic take. Chinese previous generations I've known in my circle are also stepped in the genuine belief of filial piety and national loyalty.

verisimi 4y ago

sfg 4y ago

Restrict each country to one competitor.

DocTomoe 4y ago
The problem with easy solutions is that they aren't solutions, and they aren't easy. It is massively unfair to a top athlete to not being allowed to compete because he's the second best in India, or China, or the United States, when a much lower-ranked athlete from, say, Burkina Faso is allowed to run merely because of their nationality.
- sfg 4y ago
  The principle of open contest* avoids the problem you cite. Such a problem is inherent to international competition*. The mixture of limited open competition (multiple entries per country) introduces a fault into the system, which corrupts the contest at the highest level as detailed in the article. You make it less likely the best of anywhere will win, so that the second best of somewhere can compete. If you accept the competitive principle that is inherent to the entire design, then the problem goes away. But yeah, I know most people won't accept this. That is cool. They'll continue to enjoy the Olympics; I'll continue to ignore it. * In principle, I think a contest that aims to be the pinnacle of a sport, as the Olympics events do generally aim (Association Football being an exception), should be an open contest. However, I'm not sure if an Olympics that was formally open would actually be treated as anything other than effectively an international contest. Still, maybe open would be better (I'd be happy to see it tried), but it is not hard to see that it might cause issues of its own. * in international competition, it is probably not even fair to consider it a problem, as it is really just an accepted part of such systems.
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    Technically, the Olympics are considered an open event - while you are supposed to compete under your country's flag (more specifically: under your country's NOC), there is a process in place for when this is not possible[1]. The problem with the Olympics is a different one - an organisation that creates a highly complex event with construction and travel is dependant on national governments to support it (even if there is no corruption involved) - and that will invariably lead to said countries doing it for the prestige. I guess the only way around that would be setting up permanent Olympic venues and giving them a status like the UN General Assembly building [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_Olympic_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Olympians_at_the_O...

dncornholio 4y ago

Boxing has a few blatant examples as well: 1. Roy Jones Jr. - Park Si-Heon 1988 2. Floyd Mayweather - Serafim Todorov 1996 3. Michael Conlan - Vladimir Nikitin 2016 4. Evander Holyfield - Kevin Barry 1984 5. Anthony Joshua - Erislandy Savón 2012 Boxing is probably the most rotten thing of the whole Olympics.

aljgz 4y ago

Iranian athletes have been dealing with this nightmare: if in an international competition they face a competitor from Israel, they will be told that they have to avoid competing. This is part of Iran's Islamic government's symbolic gesture to show that they do not recognize a country by that name, and so their representatives do not compete against them. This has caused a huge amount of damage on these athletes' professional lives. Imagine an Olympic competition, you might be in the right shape to compete in the Olympic only once, and you miss that not by your chance. No officials in Iran take the responsibility of this decision, no one knows what institute forces athletes to abandon their competition, but this continues. Many of top athletes migrate to other countries (usually just stay in the country they are for the competition as refugees, and do not come back with the team, then they move to another country) for a chance to compete free from this restriction.

thrwyoilarticle 4y ago

>They came to tell me that I had to lose, and they would give me the same reward of a EUR 21,500 bonus Nice! Here you have to spend 6 weeks at a coding camp and join a company developing CRUD apps to make that kind of bonus.

paganel 4y ago

That Chinese athlete joined the Olympics as member of the Chinese Badminton Team, with the focus on "team". If the team's coaches decided that her opponent in the semis had better chances to beat the Danish lady (the only other non-Chinese athlete left in the semis) then what happened here is indeed right for the Chinese team as a whole. As it happens, the Danish lady was defeated in the final by the Chinese athlete chosen by the Chinese coaches to play against her, so it seems that the coach's action was the correct one for the Chinese Badminton Team.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago

This is the kind of things that bother me in current sport. Not that it is a business with backstabbing, just that we paint it as clean and magnificent. An elite athlete also does not have anything to do with the average Joe out Jane, so let's stop pretending about health and normality. I played volleyball for my uni, it was a nightmare and I gave up because of the stress and lack of fun. I then played in "business league" and our team was dreadful. We were always messy but this was pure fun and joy. The other teams knew we were bad and they we would loose, so they played cool, had fun with combinations that they would not risk with other teams etc. We usually ended with 4 or 5 sets because everyone wanted the match to last. And then beer afterwards (I arranged for special funding because we were always the ones to buy the first round...). We had the only mixed team (and thanks god, because the girls were systematically saving the team's ass) This is what I call real, fun, great sport.