Sick to Death Part III
BREAKING NEWS AS OF 19 MINUTES AGO.
Oh no, Ohno!
Ummm… Well… I guess Korea can go and bitch away to their heart’s content. In a classic case of The BOy Who Cried Wolf, the Koreans were right this time. It appears that a judging error did, indeed, rob Korea of the gymnastics gold medal.
I retract most of what I said yesterday and some of what I said earlier today. Yes. Filing the protest and claiming to be robbed was justified.
According to Yahoo, “A mistake in scoring of the all-around gymnastics final cost Yang Tae-young the gold that ended up going to Hamm, the International Gymnastics Federation said Saturday. The South Korean got the bronze instead.”
What was the mistake? The judges started with the wrongstart value: “Yang received a start value of 9.9 on parallel bars, a tenth lower than he got for the same routine in team qualifying and finals. After reviewing a tape of the all-around, FIG officials determined Yang should have been awarded a start value of 10. With the extra 0.10, he would have finished with 57.874 points and defeated Hamm by 0.051. ”
The results will stand because Korea did not protest before the end of the round.
Two things to deal with here: First, if I was Paul Hamm, I would give up my medal. I wouldn’t give it to the Korean, but I would give it up. I couldn’t look at it every day knowing that I got it on a judging screwup like the one that occurred.
Second, The true test of Korean athlete and citizen character will be how they handle the news. Will that simply say, “See we told you so,” and then move on, or will they keep whining and complain and screaming conspiracy theories. Unfortuately, I am afraid that the latter is more likely.
Why? because in an unfortunate turn of events, three judges were suspended as a result of the mistake “to protect the integrity of the FIG, the judges, and to be able to maintain and ensure the highest possible judging standard at the Olympic Games”. Who was suspended? Spain’s Benjamin Bango and Columbia’s Oscar Buitrago Reyes who were responsible for determining the start values. Also, the key figure, America’s George Beckstead, who was the panel chairman, and therefore had ultimate responsibility for all the judges.
Yup. That’s right. An American was in charge of the judging panel that made a mistake leading to a Korean being screwed out of a medal in favor of an American athlete. Great… THAT isn’t going to help smooth things over very much.
Let’s see how this plays out. Will Koreans handle it with grace and style? Will Hamm surrender his medal? I personally will not be holding my breath for either of them to happen.