Adrian Liu and Derrick Ng, disqualified Pan Am badminton players, lose major sponsor over clerical error

Two of Canada's top badminton players who were disqualified from the Pan Am Games because of a clerical error might also lose their chance to compete at the Olympics.

A major sponsor of Adrian Liu and Derrick Ng pulled out because the Vancouver duo missed out on gaining important ranking points needed to qualify for the Olympics Games.

Ng says he and Liu can't afford the $40,000 bill to compete in nearly 18 other tournaments to make up the qualifying points, so they've started a crowdfunding campaign online.

"It was pretty devastating to hear our sponsor was pulling our funding," said Ng. "It was another big blow for us."

The pair were disqualified because Badminton Canada mistakenly entered them into another tournament that overlapped with the Games, which is in violation of a Badminton World Federation regulation.

Anil Kaul, president of Badminton Canada, say the organization is looking at ways to help Ng and Liu.

"Some sort of financial support is what they require at the moment," said Kaul in a phone interview from Winnipeg.

"What form and how we do that is still up in the air. They`re not looking for handshakes and stuff, they`re looking to get to events and try to qualify for the Olympics."

Kaul said there is plenty of blame to go around in assessing what led to the conflicting entries and Pan Am disqualification.

"Badminton Canada could have caught it I guess. But Derek, Adrian and their coach could have caught it as well. There's tons of people who could have caught it."

Kaul added Badminton Canada is reviewing its procedures.

Liu and Ng's crowd funding campaign had raised more than $4,600 as of 2:00 p.m. PT Tuesday.

"It means a lot to us, we never really knew how much people cared," said Ng. "We can't do it without them."