Saturday, August 21, 2004
It Looked Very Suspicious, Even Worse, Tainted - Hamm´s Gold
This is the problem with power, money wheeling sports nowadays, in general, and with the Olympics with all the gold hungry sports folks from different sports categories.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Paul Hamm's gold medal just lost its luster. A scoring mistake at the all-around gymnastics final cost South Korea's Yang Tae-young the gold that ended up going to Hamm, the International Gymnastics Federation ruled Saturday. Yang got the bronze instead. Three judges were suspended, but the results will not be changed, the federation said.
This is what makes judge sports ugly.
I don´t understand a thing about gymnastics, to give an educated opinion about the issue of how Hamm and the Koreans were scored. But by the commentators, the booing in the stadium, the news articles coming out, the gold win looked questionable and even tainted right at the moment the scores came out. Now there is proof. There´s been an error. Three judges suspended. It smells foul.
So, maybe the rules don´t allow for errors that award gold medals to the wrong guy to be corrected, but in my view, that makes for a very tainted win. You can´t win on your own merit, so you have to win on some judging error? And knowing how high the stakes are for the gold win, perhaps the judges got a little incentive to make such an error?
And isn´t it disgusting how much of the media beat their drums for Hamm to keep the gold and the Korean not be awarded his, inspite of this having come to light? In a utopic world, this sleazy media would all echo:
Hamm should share gold, not Wheaties box - Ian O´Connor
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Paul Hamm's gold medal just lost its luster. A scoring mistake at the all-around gymnastics final cost South Korea's Yang Tae-young the gold that ended up going to Hamm, the International Gymnastics Federation ruled Saturday. Yang got the bronze instead. Three judges were suspended, but the results will not be changed, the federation said.
This is what makes judge sports ugly.
I don´t understand a thing about gymnastics, to give an educated opinion about the issue of how Hamm and the Koreans were scored. But by the commentators, the booing in the stadium, the news articles coming out, the gold win looked questionable and even tainted right at the moment the scores came out. Now there is proof. There´s been an error. Three judges suspended. It smells foul.
So, maybe the rules don´t allow for errors that award gold medals to the wrong guy to be corrected, but in my view, that makes for a very tainted win. You can´t win on your own merit, so you have to win on some judging error? And knowing how high the stakes are for the gold win, perhaps the judges got a little incentive to make such an error?
And isn´t it disgusting how much of the media beat their drums for Hamm to keep the gold and the Korean not be awarded his, inspite of this having come to light? In a utopic world, this sleazy media would all echo:
Hamm should share gold, not Wheaties box - Ian O´Connor
The official boxscore said Hamm beat Kim Dae-eun and countryman Yang in the closest all-around competition the Olympics have ever seen. As it turns out, that boxscore is a fraud. The International Gymnastics Federation ruled that three judges — from Spain, Colombia and the U.S. — needed to be suspended because of this fraud, but that the final results were the final results.
What a joke.
Fairness and common sense should always supersede some bureaucrat's blowhard rules, rules that have a way of bending with the public opinion gale, anyway.
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