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August 27, 2004
What a crock
Gymnastics officials are encouraging Paul Hamm to return the gold medal he earned in the all-around competition last week. What do I have to say about it: What a crock! It is widely known that every gymnastics competition has judgment mistakes made on many levels. If they had reviewed the tape they would have likely found many scoring errors that applied to every contestant in the competition.
If I'm Paul Hamm I'm keeping the medal I was awarded. Let the rest of the duke it out to determine whether or not another gold medal should be awarded. (it shouldn't, but Hamm certainly doesn't deserve to lose his)
You gotta feel for the guy. His life would probably be better had he won silver.
Sports Illustrated's E.M. Swift:
So why not a second gold medal? Why not accommodate the upset Koreans and send everyone home happy? Well for one thing, you can make a pretty good case that, if you're going to go to the videotape, Yang shouldn't have won.
Yes, the videotape of the parallel bars showed the judges erred by assigning a 9.9 start value. But it showed something else, too. In the course of his routine, Yang had four holds on the bar, when the rules allow for a maximum of three. The deduction for that mistake? Two-tenths of a point.
The judges missed it.
It is not enough to say Paul Hamm should keep his gold medal. He's a deserving champion. Period.
Posted by Judd at August 27, 2004 10:16 AM
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