Make Fatal Mistakes, PBSI Asks BWF To Be Responsible

JAKARTA The Indonesian Badminton Association (PBSI) has asked the international badminton parent BWF to be responsible for the fatal error of inputting the 2024 Olympic qualifying points.

PBSI Secretary General Fadil Imran said that the mistakes made had violated the rules and noble passions of the Olympics.

"The calculation error carried out by BWF directly is not only detrimental to the Indonesian pair, especially Bagas Maulana/Muhammad Shohibul Fikri, but also to all pairs who fight on Road to Paris 2024," he said.

The impact of the negligence by the BWF resulted in the French men's doubles pair Ronan Labar/Lucas Corvee getting a ticket to the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In the double Road to Paris ranking, they actually did not qualify. However, they were able to get a ticket to Paris thanks to the victory of the lawsuit at the Sports Arbitration Court (CAS).

When the European tour was over, Ronan/Lucas were in the qualifying zone for the Olympics. However, BWF then revised the rankings because they realized they had made a mistake.

The revised result made the French pair Christo Popov/Toma Junior Popov who got tickets to the Olympics this year. Not satisfied with that, Ronan/Lucas then took the appeal route and was granted.

The inclusion of Ronan/Lucas to the Olympics automatically brings the number of men's doubleses who will be contestants to 17 pairs. This will automatically affect the group draw later.

The four groups, each of which contains four teams, should now accommodate more or five pairs struggling in the round-robin system.

"If Fajar Alfian/Muhammad Rian Ardianto join the group later, they will compete four times in the group stage. This is very detrimental because there is an additional match," said Fadil.

In addition, this point calculation error also harmed other Indonesian couples, namely Bagas Maulana/Muhammad Shohibul Fikri.

The loss occurred in the last 2024 Badminton Asia event. At that time, Bagas/Fikri became the eighth seed in a new count after initially becoming the ninth seed.

Bagas/Fikri's position being pursued instead of chasing made pressure on them stronger. As a result, the 2022 All England champions immediately lost in the first round.

The end of this mistake has made the men's doubles draw not yet carried out. In fact, the draw for the other number was completed on Friday.