LON­DON- The Lon­don Olympics were shak­en yes­ter­day by the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of eight bad­minton play­ers for throw­ing match­es in the women's dou­bles, spark­ing harsh crit­i­cism from or­gan­is­ers, play­ers and fans. The play­ers from Chi­na, South Ko­rea and In­done­sia lost match­es at the Lon­don Games to get eas­i­er ri­vals in the play­offs, the Bad­minton World Fed­er­a­tion said. "Sport is com­pet­i­tive," said IOC Vice Pres­i­dent Craig Reed­ie, the for­mer head of the in­ter­na­tion­al bad­minton fed­er­a­tion. "If you lose the com­pet­i­tive el­e­ment, then the whole thing be­comes a non­sense." Chi­na did not chal­lenge the de­ci­sion. South Ko­rea and In­done­sia ap­pealed the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion, but the fed­er­a­tion re­ject­ed the South Ko­re­an ap­peal and In­done­sia with­drew its chal­lenge. The Chi­nese were ac­cused of start­ing the prob­lem by de­lib­er­ate­ly los­ing a game Tues­day night. This led to oth­er teams be­hav­ing in a sim­i­lar way to try to force an eas­i­er quar­ter­fi­nal draw. At one stage both teams ap­peared to be try­ing to lose a game. The crowd caught on, and booed.

"De­press­ing. Who wants to sit through some­thing like that?" said Se­bas­t­ian Coe, chair­man of the Olympic or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee. The In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee said it would al­low bad­minton's rul­ing body to deal with the con­tro­ver­sy. "We have full con­fi­dence in the fed­er­a­tion to take any nec­es­sary steps," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. "They have the ex­pe­ri­ence to deal with such is­sues." Teams blamed the in­tro­duc­tion of a round-robin stage rather than a straight knock­out tour­na­ment as the main cause of the prob­lem. In the round-robin for­mat, los­ing one game can lead to an eas­i­er matchup in the next round. The em­bar­rass­ment was tem­pered by some good news for the host na­tion: British row­ers Heather Stan­ning and He­len Glover won the coun­try's first gold medal in women's pair, and Tour de France cham­pi­on Bradley Wig­gins earned Britain its sec­ond in the men's time tri­al a few hours lat­er. Chi­na's bad­minton play­ers were not the coun­try's on­ly ath­letes to face scruti­ny, as Bei­jing ob­ject­ed to spec­u­la­tion that Chi­na's newest swim­ming su­per­star Ye Shi­wen was dop­ing. The 16-year-old has come un­der sus­pi­cion af­ter some stun­ning per­for­mances.

Ye's fa­ther, Ye Qing­song, told Chi­nese me­dia that west­ern me­dia are "al­ways ar­ro­gant." Olympic or­gan­is­ers in Lon­don al­so de­fend­ed the Chi­nese swim­mer. It was not all bad news for Chi­na, which took golds for div­ing, ta­ble-ten­nis yes­ter­day. Amer­i­can Kristin Arm­strong won her sec­ond straight Olympic time tri­al gold medal, cov­er­ing the 29-kilo­me­tre (18-mile) course south of Lon­don in 37 min­utes, 34.82 sec­onds. Ju­dith Arndt of Ger­many took the sil­ver and Rus­sia's Ol­ga Zabelin­skaya picked up her sec­ond bronze of these games. In Olympic bas­ket­ball, Em­i­lie Goubis scored 16 points and Is­abelle Ya­coubou added eight of her 14 in the fourth quar­ter to help France ad­vance to the women's quar­ter­fi­nals with a 64-60 vic­to­ry over Cana­da yes­ter­day. In morn­ing row­ing, Princes William and Har­ry watched as He­len Glover and Heather Stan­ning won the first gold for the host na­tion. The ath­letes punched the air af­ter they crossed the line, then cupped their mouths in dis­be­lief. Aus­tralia and New Zealand fol­lowed for sil­ver and bronze.

Ger­many's pow­er­ful eight-man crew crossed the line first for its first win in the high-pro­file event since the coun­try was uni­fied in 1990. Cana­da took sil­ver and Britain set­tled for the bronze. And New Zealand's dom­i­nant men's pair, Hamish Bond and Er­ic Mur­ray, qual­i­fied quick­est from the semi­fi­nals at the Olympic row­ing re­gat­ta at an over­cast Eton Dor­ney, beat­ing sec­ond-place Italy by near­ly eight sec­onds. The British crew of George Nash and William Satch won the oth­er heat. But Bond and Mur­ray have not lost in four years as a pair, and any­thing oth­er than a Ki­wi win in the fi­nal would be a big sur­prise. Ju­do com­pe­ti­tions yield­ed a gold for South Ko­rea in the men's 90-kilo­gramme cat­e­go­ry, and one for France in women's 70-kilo­gramme cat­e­go­ry. North Ko­rea took a gold medal in women's 69-kilo­gramme weightlift­ing di­vi­sion. The Eng­lish weath­er brought rain yes­ter­day, as Roger Fed­er­er en­dured two de­lays be­fore reach­ing the Olympic ten­nis quar­ter­fi­nals when he beat De­nis Is­tomin of Uzbek­istan 7-5, 6-3.