Justin Murray Wrote:
Perfectly fine strategy. If you introduce penalties for "not playing your hardest", that creates too much subjectivity as we have no standards on what "hardest" means. This is done in sports all the time. NFL teams that secure home field advantage for the playoffs put their second and third string players in the final games. World Cup teams that secure a spot in the elimination round will back off in the final game of group play to avoid wasting energy.
If the organizers don't like the behavior, don't have group play or round robin stages and use the single elimination format.
David Wilson Wrote:
Perfectly fine strategy and is the right thing to do in this case.
If the pair wins, they don't gain anything but they hurt their country's interests. Who made such stupid rules?
Juli Kell Wrote:
"Is it fair for athletes to try to lose in order to secure better placing in the next round or conserve energy?"
Why not? The New York Yankees deliberately lost to the Tampa Bay Rays at the end of the season so that they wouldn't have to face the Red Sox in the playoffs.
Christopher Andrews Wrote:
The goal is to win the gold medal, not this particular match. The is a commonly strategy in sports. During the EUFA European Cup last month, there was a debate on whether Spain should have score the goal in the last few minutes of the group match to revive Italy. Even armies will retreat temporarily to secure a better position for battles.
I am surprised at the public reaction here. Of course, if I were in the audience, I would probably boo too. But the boos should be directed to the very people who are speaking out about this -- the governing bodies who picked this format for the tournament. The players are just doing what we would expect -- setting the best strategy to get to the gold.
David Corwin Wrote: