Capital New York

Tatiana commented on In the McKayla Maroney era, U.S. women's gymnastics is (literally) stronger than ever

No, no, no. The new scoring system was not the result of the AA competition in Athens--it was the result of the event finals. Alexei Nemov had just finished a diffciult high bar rotuine which was not scored as highly as the audience would've liked. They started to boo the judges and this went on for many minutes, holding up the competition. They would not stop until Nemov himself reappeared and motioned for the audience to quiet down so the next competitor could perform. The AA judging debacle did not cost South Korea a gold, but you could argue it won them a bronze. What happened was that long after the AA competition had concluded, one of the South Koreans, upon reviewing the tape, noticed that a judge had credited Yang (the bronze medalist) with an incorrect, lower start value, which affected his score. They filed a protest but it was too late--for obvious reasons you have to file protests in a timely fashion (otherwise everyone would be reveiwing tapes long afterwards and trying to overturn results). Paul Hamm, the gold medalist, was pressured by FIG to give up his gold in the name of sportsmanship but Hamm, feeling he'd played by the rules and earned his gold, would not. THEN upon further review someone noticed another judging error--Yang had had too many holds on one of his routines. He was not penalized for the extra hold even though he should've been--which meant he should not even have gotten the bronze! But, because protests need to be filed in a timely fashion, he was allowed to keep his medal. So the results (which were upheld for the Sports Arbitrartion Court) are that Hamm definitely did earn his gold--Yang possibly was gifted with a bronze.

Posted on August 15th, 2012 6:24pm