I never thought I'd see the day when I disagree with Charles Austin, and find myself on the same page as Christine Brennan.
They made a mistake. And while it's a tragedy for one man, it's very easily correctable. Paul Hamm should give back the Gold, and before somebody tells him he has to.
There’s a similar situation developing involving the results of the men’s vault final. A Romanian won the bronze after badly botcing his landing on his second jump and beat a Canadian (gold medalist in the floor exercise, Kyle Shewfelt) who stuck his landing. According to Canadian officials the Romanian’s score was mathematically impossible and should have been reviewed under the FIG’s own rules. thus far the Canadian delegation’s complaints have been ignored.
http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Athletics/Games/2004/Gymnastics/2004/08/23/598655-cp.html
I just watched the rebroadcast of the vault and saying Shewfelt stuck his landings is a bit generous, but saying the Romanian botched his second landing is a huge understatement. While his feet were the first part of his body to hit the floor he stumbled badly, fell to the side and touched the floor with his hand.
To add to the intrigue the guy who took the bonze from Shewfelt is the same Romanian with who he tied yesterday in the floor competition but Shewfelt won the tie breaker on the sixth judging criteria.
Shewfelt himself talked to CBC and simply said that he’s exstatic that he won yesterday and that in gymnastics sometime these things happen so all he’s going to do is focus on his gold medal.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong. But according to a story earlier today and on the broadcast tonight, it looks like the judges made the right call after all, but for the wrong reasons. One set of judges made the wrong call on the difficulty of the routine (.1 too low), but another set of judges failed to deduct for too many holds (.2 deduction). So, maybe he Yang didn’t even deserve the bronze medal.
I still think it would set a bad precedent to come back later and change the scores. The only reason I think a score should be changed is if one athlete was found to be cheating. Otherwise, if everyone is acting honestly, we have to understand that sometimes mistakes will hapen, just like the rest of life.
Four things to consider here —
1. Charles’ point about the 0.2 deduction apparently missed (according to Hamm’s coach, to be fair).
2. The procedural issue of when the Korean coaches protested, though there’s some dispute over that.
3. Related to that — Hamm was told what he needed to do to win gold, just like you’d tell a team down 8-6 in the bottom of the ninth that they need three runs. He went out and did it. Awfully tough to go back and take that away from him.
4. There’s precedent for this sort of situation to protect both the Yangs of the world and the Hamms. They’ve given duplicate golds.
Not saying you can’t make a case here for other resolutions, but it’s not that easy to say he should give it back.
The only thing I’ll say definitively is that the media have treated Hamm with an awful lot of condescending advice and not enough sympathy. The poor guy pulls off one of the best clutch-time performances you’ll ever see in the Olympics, and now he’s Public Enemy No. 2 behind Apolo Anton Ohno. It’s not fair.
This is just one sports fan’s opinion, but … if the winner of an athletic competition is determined by a panel of judges it is NOT a sport! Gymnastics, diving, figure skating, and boxing will always be plagued by absurd controversies due to this essential subjectivity. It seems pretty pointless to quibble with any particular result. Did Hamm hit the gymnastic equivalent of a game-winning 3-run homer, as mr. austin suggests? I might think so, you might think so, even the judges might think so, but there is no way to determine objectively that he did any such thing. When Adrian Beltre hits a game-winning 3-run homer the outcome is a matter of fact not opinion. Paul Hamm can’t point above the outfield bleachers and yell, SCOREBOARD! This is why I cannot care what happens to Mr. Hamm and his gold medal. He won the male beauty pageant/talent show, and the fact that he can now un-win it tells you all you need to know.
Mindpunk — Tony Tarasco, still staring up at that kid in Yankee Stadium, begs to differ.
“The only thing I’ll say definitively is that the media have treated Hamm with an awful lot of condescending advice and not enough sympathy.”
I agree completely. People always talk about a “liberial bias” in the media, but it’s really a bias towards altruism. Sportswriters especially love the idea of self-sacrifice.