Posted on 08/22/2004 10:24:22 AM PDT by School of Rational Thought
S. Korean Unlikely to Get Gymnastics Gold
By EDDIE PELLS AP Sports Writer
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- The satisfaction of knowing they should have won gymnastics gold might be all the South Koreans get. While the country's Olympic team met with lawyers Sunday to plan its appeal over the medal given to American Paul Hamm, the Court of Arbitration for Sport indicated it won't take the case.
Hamm won the all-around title Wednesday after judges incorrectly scored Yang Tae-young's parallel bars routine, failing to give him enough points for the level of difficulty. Yang ended up with the bronze.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
I dunno. If there was a mistake, a real mistake, it should be corrected. And it does seem there was a real mistake.
They should give this guy the Gold, and let Hamm keep his... and the 4th place finisher, give him a Bronze... seems like common sense to me...
Three words: Roy Jones, Junior.
Nah, he is keeping his medal.
I'm not so sure. They are supposed to be judged against a "level of difficulty." The Korean was supposed to judged against a difficulty level of 10. He was not, instead he was judged against 9.9. And that was the difference. Had he been judged against a 10, he would have won the gold.
Screw ups all around, to be sure. What I don't understand is why did his team let him start the event. Don't they confirm all this before they start?
I think the guy got screwed. They need a "Upon further review..." system to correct errors like this.
LVM
What's more valuable to Hamm: the Gold, or a Silver with a huge celebrity bump?
The only obstacle is that the Korean with the Silver would have to be willing to accept the Bronze. Don't know if he'd do that. Also, the governing bodies might suspend the gymnasts for such an unsanctioned deal.
I don't like this "give both a Gold". That was BS when they did it with the figure skaters, and it would be BS now. There can only be one winner.
Why isn't Al Gore asking for a recount?
I agree. The marketablity of Hamm's gold is diminished if not shot to hell. Because it's acknowledged by everyone that the Korean should have won Hamm picture WON'T end up on Wheaties' boxes. If, however, in a diplay of sportsmanship he exchanges medals with the two other gymnasts, he will recieve a tremendous amount of positive publicity and likely garner some endorsement deals he otherwise wouldn't.
Also, not to be forgotten is it's the right thing to do.
They ought to have a do-over.
If they felt there was a problem with the scoring, the Koreans should have protested right away. The rules say the protest must be made before the end of the next rotation. After that, no scores can be changed.
We don't know for sure if this particular mistake would have changed the outcome. Maybe there were other scoring mistakes among the many other routines by other gymnasts. But the only one that has been retroactively examined is this one score by the Korean.
If they were going to change the outcome now, the only fair way would be to reexamine the scoring for everyone for the entire night. There's a reason they don't do that. It would be like using "instant" replay on entire football games and changing the score after the game has been over for days.
When it's over, it's over.
My thoughts exactly. These hypocrites were staging demonstrations against the US when the US delegation had the temerity to suggest that something was amiss with the Roy Jones Jr. decision. Subsequent investigations have shown that judges were bribed to favor Korean athletes yet Jones still doesn't have his gold.
Even if a mistake in judging was made so what? What other mistakes were made and that haven't been examined? Some mistakes in judging may have hurt Hamm and benefitted the Koreans and haven't been examined; who knows? Unless some sort of fix was actually altered the decision, allow game time judgements to stand.
Did Pat Buchanan win the silver?
Didn't they go ahead and award that Canadian skating duo the Gold after the fact, and had them share the gold with the original winners in the last Winter Olympics? Why can't they do the same here?
"they ought to have a do over"
or an intense round of "Rock/Paper/Scissors"
If you say so.
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