Rio de Janeiro: The Final Draw for the 2016 Olympic Badminton Tournament will take place on July 26, from 11 am to 1 pm (Rio time) at the badminton Olympic venue, Riocentro – Pavilion 4 (Barra Zone).
The format will start with group stage follow by the knockout stage. There are total of 41 players in men’s singles and 40 players in women’s singles.
According to Badminton World Federation (BWF), the number of seeds will correspond to the number of groups. In the group stage, there shall be up to 16 seeds in the main draws.
For Singles:
The seeded pairs shall be placed at the top of each group as follows:
a) No. 1 placed at the top of Group A
b) No. 2 placed at the top of Group P
c) No. 3 and 4 drawn by lot at the top of Groups E and L
D) No. 5- No. 8 drawn by lot into Groups C, G, J, and N
e) The remaining seeds shall be drawn by lot into groups B, D, F, H, I, K, M and O (depending on the number of groups).
For Doubles:
The seeded pairs shall be placed at top of each group as follows:
a) No. 1 placed at the top of Group A
b) No. 2 placed at the top of Group D
c) No. 3 and 4 drawn by lot at the top of Groups B and C.
d.) The remaining pairs shall be distributed in groups by lot.
After the singles knockout stage, the winners in each group will be placed at the pre-designated places in the draw.
To avoid match throwing scandal that happened during the London Olympic, a random draw in the knock out stage (quarter finals) will be made to determine the where the two top ranked pairs from each group from the Group Play Stage will reside.
For badminton fans that would like to see another epic battle between Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan in the Olympic final, let’s hope they will be placed on different sides of the draw.
