Badminton at the 2012 Summer Olympics

Dates 28 July – 5 August 2012
Medal Events 5

The badminton tournament at the 2012 Summer Olympics was held at Wembley Arena in London, a venue originally constructed for swimming events at the 1934 British Empire Games. It had been used for multiple events the last time London hosted the Olympic Games, in 1948, and was also the home of rhythmic gymnastics in 2012). Players and pairs qualified for the Games based on rankings published by the Badminton World Federation on May 3, and each continent was guaranteed at least one entrant in each event regardless of ranking. The London Games saw the introduction of a group stage of play to the badminton events, which had been introduced at the 2010 Youth Summer Olympics and replaced the instant elimination format used in previous editions.

Zhao Yunlei of China was perhaps the biggest star of the tournament as the only competitor to win two medals, gold in both the women’s and mixed doubles. China pulled off the impressive feat of sweeping the gold medals in the five categories (men’s and women’s singles and men’s, women’s and mixed doubles) and, with an additional two silver medals and one bronze, matched their 2008 total of eight medals, albeit with two extra gold. Despite having been the overall medal winner in the Olympic badminton tournament since 2000, this feat was nonetheless outstanding in that the Chinese kept every other country to one medal or less, except for Denmark, who won silver in men’s doubles and bronze in the mixed version. This achievement, however, was overshadowed by a match-fixing scandal in the women’s doubles event that saw eight players, four from South Korea, two from China, and two from Indonesia, disqualified from competition for “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport”. The media attention given to this debacle painted a negative portrait of a sport that, in many non-Asian countries, did not usually garner that much publicity. There was also some criticism that China’s dominance at the Olympics suggested that the sport was not competitive enough to be part of the program (as had been determined for baseball/softball after the 2004 Games). Such concerns were allayed by the results of the 2016 Games, which saw the medals distributed more widely.

Events

Event Status Date Participants NOCs
Singles, Men Olympic 28 July – 5 August 2012 40 34
Doubles, Men Olympic 28 July – 5 August 2012 32 14
Singles, Women Olympic 28 July – 4 August 2012 46 42
Doubles, Women Olympic 28 July – 4 August 2012 32 13
Doubles, Mixed Olympic 28 July – 3 August 2012 32 14
172 (86/86) 51 (38/43)

Medals

Event Gold Silver Bronze
Singles, Men Lin DanCHN Lee Chong WeiMAS Chen LongCHN
Doubles, Men People's Republic of China 1CHN DenmarkDEN Republic of Korea 1KOR
Singles, Women Li XueruiCHN Wang YihanCHN Saina NehwalIND
Doubles, Women People's Republic of China 1CHN Japan 1JPN Russian FederationRUS
Doubles, Mixed People's Republic of China 1CHN People's Republic of China 2CHN Denmark 1DEN

Medal table

NOC Gold Silver Bronze Total
People's Republic of China CHN 5 2 1 8
Denmark DEN 0 1 1 2
Japan JPN 0 1 0 1
Malaysia MAS 0 1 0 1
India IND 0 0 1 1
Republic of Korea KOR 0 0 1 1
Russian Federation RUS 0 0 1 1