From: teuben@lynx.astro.umd.edu (Peter Teuben)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.olympics
Subject: BADMINTON: preview
Date: 27 Jul 92 19:04:49 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: University of Maryland, Astronomy Department


    OLYMPIC BADMINTON - BARCELONA 1992
    ==================================

 1. Preview
===========

   After having been an exhibition sport during the 1972 Munich
Olympics, and a sell-out exhibition during the previous 1988 Seoul
Olympics, badminton is now an Olympic medal sport.  However, as in so
many other Olympic sports (for example tennis, and table tennis), mixed
doubles is not an Olympic event.  The official reason for this is simply
due to limited space and time. 

    Originally the competition was planned to be held in Sabadell, a
suburb to the north of Barcelona.  The town's Municipal Sports Hall
would have been modified to provide a three-court facility seating
4,000.  However, the competition has been moved to the 'Parc de Mar', in
the Olympic Village.  No more details are known at this writing. 

    The IOC has set a limit of 192 players, with 40 players for each of
the singles events, and 28 teams for the doubles events.  A player, if
qualified, may play singles as well as doubles. 

    Badminton, like so many other Olympic sports, has a limited number
of countries participating.  The IBF (International Badminton
Federation) selects players primarily based on a computer ranking
system, though with an additional requirement of a fair geographical
representation.  The selection of players was done as follows:

 1.  First, the host nation, Spain, is quaranteed one spot. 
    (David Serano will enter). 
 2.  Next, the top team/player on the ranking list from each of the five
    IBF continental regions (Europe, Asia, Oceania, Americas, Africa)
    is selected, plus filling five more spots. 
 3.  Next, any team/player, in position 1-4 on the ranking list, not yet
    selected, will be selected, thus filling between zero and three
    spots (since at least one of these will have been selected in (2)
    above. 
 4.  Next, any team/player, in positions 5-8 on the ranking list, not yet
    selected, will be selected, unless in doing so a country would have
    more than three representatives in the event as a result of that
    selection.
 5.  Finally, the remainder of the teams/players necessary to fill the
    draw are selected in order from positions 9 and down on the ranking
    lists, unless in doing so a country would have more than two in that
    event as a result of that selection. 


    U.S.  participants are Chris Jogis, Benny Lee and Tom Reidy for the
men, and Linda French, Joy Kitzmiller and Erika von Heiland for the
women.  They will all enter in the singles events.  It is not expected
that any of them will be a medal contestant.  The competition,
specifically from China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Korea is very strong. 
The current best US team is Tom Reidy and Benny Lee, who rank 23rd on
the mens doubles IBF ranking (January 1992).  French/Kitzmiller also
enter in the doubles event.  Currently Chris Jogis, who has recently
spend some time in the Netherlands, has the best chance of surviving a
few rounds. 

    Dutch participants (being a bit nationalistic here) I heard of are
only women: Eline Coene (13th on the IBF singles ranking), Astrid van
der Knaap en Erica van der Heuvel are participating.  I could not locate
any Dutch men in the listing. 



Schedule: (times are all local Olympics)
_________

Tuesday, July 28:       classification games  10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Wednesday, July 29:     classification games  10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Thursday, July 30:      classification games  10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Friday, July 31:        classification games  10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Saturday, Aug 1:        classification games  10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Sunday, Aug 2:          quarter finals        10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Monday, Aug 3:          semi finals           10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Tuesday, Aug 4:         Four final games      11 a.m. 


TV coverage:
____________

Your best bet is a satellite dish and pick up the Malaysian signal,
or perhaps the Australian one. NBC *may* have a 5 minute spot, but
since they are totally driven by money and US medals, there is little
hope of coverage for the supposed 300,000 badminton players in the US.


Sports Illustrate Medal picks:
______________________________


Men singles:    Ardy Wiranata, Indonesia
                Zhao Jianhua, China
                Poul-Erik Hoyer Larsen, Denmark
    	        Rashid Sidek, Malaysia

Men Doubles:    Sidek/Sidek, Malaysia               Malaysia's first gold ever!
                Park/Kim, South Korea
                Hartono/Gunawan, Indonesia
                Li/Tian, China

Women Singles:  Tang Jiuhong, China
                Susi Susanti, Indonesia
                Lee Heung Soon, South Korea
                Pernille Nedergaard Jessen, Denmark

Women Doubles:  Hwang/Chung, South Korea
                Lin/Yao, China
                Gowers/Sankey, Great Britain
                Magnusson/Lim, Sweden        



 - Peter Teuben
--
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