The last 24 hours has been the craziest 24 hours probably in the history of badminton. Controversy has placed a cloud over the games after unsavoury happenings at the London Olympics WD competition yesterday.

But for every cloud there is a silver lining and Russian duo of Nina Vislova and Valeri Sorokina benefited most by upholding the Olympic values of fair play after being promoted to the quarter finals at the expense of Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli the top seeded Chinese who were disqualified by BWF.

The Russians luck was further enhanced as the draw saw them pitched against another promoted pair, Edwards and Viljoen from South Africa. The match itself proved to be an absolute route for the Russians as they destroyed the South Africans to advance to the semi finals of the Olympic Games when yesterday they were packing their bags for the first flight back to Moscow.

“We found out at 3pm today that we were to play. We believe the BWF made the correct decision to be fair to all the spectators who paid to see the matches yesterday but there is a part of me that also feels sorry for the players” said Sorokina.

“The game was strange as we had no real time to prepare. But we are now back in the tournament and with this chance we will give everything to fight for a medal even if we have to play the Chinese” commented Vislova.

Peter Gade rolled back the years and more importantly showed signs of his true class in beating Son Wan Ho. The Dane appears to be progressing in the correct direction at these London games and his match today was by far his best performance in a year which has saw him struggle. Gade’s 21-9 21-16 win is enough to make the rest of the top seeds to sit up and take note that the Great Dane is not going to go down easily at these games.

“At this point I only want to focus on my matches.  I'm glad I won in 2 sets against a very strong Wan Ho Son” said a much focused Gade.

Gade was the only successful European Men’s singles player in the last 16 as both Jan Ø. Jørgensen and Marc Zwiebler had their Olympic dreams cut short with defeats by Lee Hyun Il and Chen Jin respectively.

There was mixed emotions for Christinna Pedersen. The Dane experienced the high of winning her mixed doubles quarter final with partner Joachim Fischer but only a few hours later the partnership with Kamilla Juhl failed to ignite as the fancied Danes went down in two sets to Japanese pair Fujii and Kakiiwa 22-20 21-10.

The shuttle in this arena travel a little bit slow and it favoured the Japanese.  They also defended very well. It was unfortunate that we weren't able to give our best - Rytter Juhl, Kamilla

In the most entertaining match of the day Polish duo of Mateusiak and Zieba experienced the ultimate Olympic heartbreak going down in three games against Chinese number 2 seeds Ma Jin and Xu Chen. The Poles trailing 19-16 in the deciding game pulled it back to trail by two at 20-18. Remarkably they levelled it up and 20-20 before two poor service returns by Zieba firstly followed by Mateussiak ended the Olympic career of the Poles who were fancied as an outside chance for a medal.

“This was a tough way to end. We were in that match and a lapse in concentration right at the end let us down. We have been playing well enough and we have let a medal slip out of our hands” said Mateusiak.

Article by Mark Phelan (Live in London)