Four badminton teams were thrown out of the 2012 London Olympics Wednesday after attempting to intentionally lose preliminary matches to get an easier track to a medal.

The Badminton World Federation announced that eight doubles players from China, South Korea, and Indonesia were disqualified for "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport."

South Korea and Indonesia both appealed the BWF's decision, but were either rejected or withdrew their appeal.

A badminton scandal rocking the London Games seems unbelievable, but video of matches among the eight players shows that all four teams were clearly trying to lose. Players were purposely hitting the shuttlecock into the net or not bothering to make the extra effort to return it over the net.

The sport, primarily dominated by Asian nations, has received a boost in attention and interest because of the scandal, but the International Olympics Committee is happy that the teams have been disqualified.

"We applaud the federation for having taken swift and defensive action," IOC spokesman Mark Adams told the Associated Press. "Such behavior is incompatible with the Olympic values."

While badminton has been stained by player misconduct, swimming continues to thrill spectators and dominate the headlines. On Wednesday it was American Nathan Adrian who triumphed in amazing fashion in the pool. Adrian defeated Australian James Magnussen by a mere 0.01 second to win gold in the men's 100-meter freestyle.

Adrian is the first American man to win that contest since Matt Biondi in 1988.

In other swimming news, Missy Franklin and Allison Schmitt both won their second gold medals as part of a four-person, 4x200-meter freestyle relay. Franklin did her part, but it was Schmitt's amazing anchor leg performance that guided the Americans to a new Olympic-record time of 7 minutes, 42.92 seconds.

While the U.S. has dominated in the pool, Britain was gold medal-less until a women's coxless rowing team finally broke through on Wednesday. Helen Glover and Heather Stanning broke a six-day drought for the home country and became the first British women to ever win Olympic gold in rowing.

British cyclist Bradley Wiggins added a gold medal of his own when he won the Olympic road race with a time of 50:39:54. Wiggins, who recently became the first British rider to win the Tour de France, easily defeated the rest of the field -- silver medalist Tony Martin of Germany finished 42 seconds behind him.

Elsewhere, Japanese gymnast Kohei Uchimura won the men's all-around gold medal. The competition was never in much doubt for Uchimura, who has won the last three world titles. Marcel Nguyen of Germany and Danell Levya of the U.S. finished second and third, respectively.

Gold China South Korea Germany