Olympic Badminton Over

The badminton competition in the 2008 Summer Olympics is over. Unfortunately, due to the lack of TV broadcasts and the unreliability of the web feeds, the only gold medal match I watched was the the women’s singles final between Zhang Nin and Xie Xinfang, and it was just the last game really. Despite not watching any of the other matches. I know that China has taken the gold in three of the five events, grabbing the gold in the aforementioned women’s singles, women’s doubles and the men’s singles. Lin Dan of China came through in the finals and won pretty easily, but that’s probably because his opponent was tired from the semi-finals while Lin faced a compatriot in his own semi-final. As for the events that China didn’t win the gold, the Chinese team lost in the men’s doubles finals to take silver, while the mixed doubles team had to settle for bronze. At the end, three out of five events isn’t bad, but China’s claim before the games about winning all five medals was probably a bit overzealous. Maybe they’ll be able to do it at London in 2012. We’ll just have to wait and see.