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The story
The women’s badminton singles third-round match at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games between world No. 7 Yuka Miyazaki (20) and Rio Olympics silver medalist P.V. Sindhu (India) began at 12:08 AM on the 27th, well past midnight. Miyazaki lost in straight games, 0-2, in front of a near-empty arena. On 5channel’s “Geinou/Sports News+” board, posters criticized the organizers’ scheduling management, while others pointed out that late-night starts and delays aren’t uncommon in other sports like tennis — opinion was split.
<Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games: Badminton> ◇27th◇ Women’s Singles, Third Round ◇ Ichinomiya City General Gymnasium
The start time of world No. 7 Yuka Miyazaki’s (20, ACT SAIKYO) match has stirred controversy.
Her third-round match against P.V. Sindhu (India), the 2016 Rio Olympics singles silver medalist, kicked off at an astonishing 12:08 AM on the 27th. In an unusual turn of events that crossed over into the next calendar day, Miyazaki fell in straight games, 0-2 (9-21, 13-21). With the match happening at such a shocking hour, it played out to a near-empty venue.
Source: nikkansports.com / Original article here
What people said
Battle start (a pun: badminton's Japanese abbreviation "bado" echoes "Bud," as in Budweiser, poking fun at people who misspell it "batominton")
man, I wish I could say that to her (´；ω；｀)
this one's entirely on the organizers' screw-up —
no excuses this time
Would be nice if reporters looked into that instead of just writing this up
Looks like someone who spells it "batminton" snuck in here
Fans can't even get home until the first trains start running, and at midnight, spectators under 18 shouldn't even be allowed in, right?
This same problem happens constantly in tennis too and still hasn't been fixed,
so of course badminton would end up the same way —
if it could be solved, they'd have solved it long ago
According to AI, that match actually started around 2-3 PM on a Friday and wrapped up by evening
That day's first match started at 9 AM, and Suzuki vs. Federer was the third match, finishing in the evening — so the "5 AM start" seems to be a myth
The "5 AM" bit apparently comes from the line for same-day tickets already forming by 5 AM
I mean, there are multiple courts for a reason
Instead they left the open courts idle and just kept waiting on the match that was dragging on, over and over, until it got to this hour
Nozomi Okuhara
Akane Yamaguchi
Kumiko Ogura & Reiko Shiota
Has anyone come along who could actually surpass these six?
Did the earlier match run long or something?
Kojirō! Pet Sematary! (a random pop-culture non sequitur riffing on the Musashi/Kojirō joke above)
They'll probably say something like "venue operations aren't under the organizing committee's authority"
A time difference — even though it's being held in Japan?
If there's a sport where doubles/pairs outrank singles, I'd love to know about it
It's indoor versus outdoor, so it's nothing like tennis
Operationally it's closer to table tennis — even a breeze blowing is a no-go
Depending on how the game's going, it can't really be helped
You can't put "leisure sports" like baseball on the same scale as real sports
She lost because they made her play starting at midnight
Well, it's a shame and all, but she lost because she wasn't good enough — that's on her skill
If it had started on schedule, fine,
but this kept getting pushed back again and again — that's what makes it so bad
Background and Key Points of This Story
This tournament had already drawn scrutiny over how athletes’ meals were handled (see comment 7), and this latest midnight start was seen as a further operational issue on top of that. Because badminton runs multiple courts at a single venue, later matches are prone to getting pushed back when an earlier one drags on. While some in the thread noted that “this kind of delay is chronic in tennis too,” the popular claim that the Suzuki-Federer match “started in the middle of the night” was corrected as false within the thread’s own discussion — a reminder that such anecdotes can spread widely without being fact-checked. Since late-night starts affect both audience turnout and athletes’ physical condition, an explanation from the tournament organizers about how this happened is likely to be the next point of focus.
*This article is compiled as excerpts and a summary of the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Asian Games] Badminton: Yuka Miyazaki’s match starts after midnight… backlash floods in online over the abnormal situation.”
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