S. Korean Unlikely to Get Gymnastics Gold

Freak Press ^ | Aug 22, 12:58 PM EDT | EDDIE PELLS

[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.

[asgardshill]

He will exchange medals before the end of the week.

I agree. And Hamm could write his own ticket marketability-wise if he did.

[Jim_Curtis]

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?

Why not give them all a gold? What proof is there that every gymnast wasn't scored on flawed criteria?

[School of Rational Thought]

Did no one get my comment or was it just not funny? Too obscure?

Did no one see the connection between Kerry's medals and the gymnist medals?

[rawhide]

No one really knows what the S Korean score would have been if he had started with a difficulty of 10. To automatically say he should have another .1 point added to his score, because he started with 9.9, is wrong. The judges may have still given him the same score or maybe just a small bump higher, but not the full .1 of a point. No one will ever know. Also, Hamm went into his final routine knowing how well he needed to do to come in first, based on the error the judges made with the S Korean, but Hamm had no way of knowing his score was in error. Who is to say that maybe Hamm would have given just a little bit more effort if he knew ahead of time what the real score the S Korean would have had. I say leave the results the way they are. Judges make mistakes, just like everyone else. You cannot undo what has already been finalized. I just hope the S Korean is man enough to accept this and does not pull an Al Gore for many years to come.

[writmeister]

There was also the conduct of the Japanese judge on either the rings or the high-bar who devalued the routine half of the American team had been using all season.

Coincidentally, the Japanese team won the gold.

[Dianna]

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?

IIRC, the second gold was awarded because there was proven collusion between judges. This was simply a mistake. Just in case you haven't heard, we found out tonight that the Korean made a mistake in his routine that wasn't deducted. He had too many "holds" which should have been an automatic 2 tenths deduction, but it was missed... just as his true start value was missed.

In the end, Hamm earned the gold.