I'll say that it is not. Clearly, using aids, drugs, or devices to gain an unfair advantage is cheating and should be dealt with accordingly, but when a pre-defined format allows an athlete to choose their path to the podium based upon where they rank in the standings, it is the format that should be expelled, not the athlete.
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| Don't blame the athletes |
After the four women's pairs had qualified for the quarterfinals of the tournament, they began intentionally losing games in order to dictate a more favorable match-up in the next round. It seems to me that that's strategic and not worthy of being ejected from the largest sporting event on the planet.
After all, athletes at the highest level of sport "tank" performances all the time to gain an advantage in the future. Consider a swimmer or sprinter who knows that he only needs to finish in the top 3 to advance to the next round. Once he knows that he has 3rd or better clinched and cannot be caught, he often lets his foot off the gas, ending the race with a less than spectacular finish. Even world's greatest Olympian Michael Phelps would be guilty of this. Or what about a soccer team that knows its next round destiny before their final round-robin match even starts and thus rests all their star players, consequently losing the match? Should these types of performance also lead to expulsions for "not using one's best efforts to win"? Of course not; in fact, we applaud them for having the savvy to save themselves for the greater battle ahead.
The eight expelled badminton athletes could not have made it any more obvious that they were trying to lose and perhaps that it what doesn't sit well with the masses, but using every available strategy to enhance your chance of winning is not cheating and shouldn't be a crime. A well thought out format that would have taken this scenario into consideration could have prevented this "gamesmanship".
Like everything else that has gone wrong with the 2012 London Olympics thus far, blame the organizers.
