12/21/24
August 27, 2004
Oopsie redux. : The head of the International Gymnastics Federation has suggested to Paul Hamm that he give his gold medal to Yang Tae-yung.
You see people and organizations shoot themselves in the foot all the time, but it's not all that often that you see them fire off the whole clip and then reload to do it again.
posted by lil_brown_bat to other at 09:09 AM - 8 comments
Good grief. The USOC hit the mail on the head with their response. This is not something that Paul Hamm should have to fix. Why is it so hard to change the scores now and officially reverse the decision? They didn't have a problem revising the Russian gymnasts score upwards the other day just to appease the fans. Apparently it's as simple as asking a judge to bump up the score a little. Pure idiocy! A bunch of 5 year olds would do a better job.
posted by camcanuck at 01:32 PM on August 27, 2004
That's rich - acknowledging that there was a mistake made, that it was your federation's fault, that there is really nothing you can do to change it - so you heap it all on the shoulders of the guy who won. Poor ol' Paul can't win. Even when he wins, err, looses. Of course, the flip side is - if you go by the rules of gymnastics and the results of each event in the all-around - the Korean really did win. That guy's not exactly wrong if he's walking around Seoul thinking he really won. Just don't make the mistake in the first place. Competence is never an overrated quality in a judge, or federation. It just seems to be a rare one.
posted by WeedyMcSmokey at 01:36 PM on August 27, 2004
Ban all "sports" based on arbitrary judging.
posted by scully at 01:42 PM on August 27, 2004
One point (actually 2/10 of one) that keeps getting dropped is that when they reviewed the tape, the found the Korean did not have .2 points deducted that should've been. So even if you revise his score up by .1, it can be argued the judges missed other deductions during the routine. Guess can you really can't ever go back again. For the FIG (Gymnastics Federation) to ask Hamm to give up the medal is just plain cowardice. Give the Korean a 2nd gold, fine, but don't ask a guy to give up his winnings because of mistakes made by judges. That's part of the sport - everyone should grow up and accept that.
posted by kokaku at 03:42 PM on August 27, 2004
also, (and this may have been brought up before) it wasn't the last event of the night. if the correct score for yang was given, hamm still had a shot at attempting a routine with a higher score.
posted by goddam at 10:00 PM on August 27, 2004
i saw paul hamm on letterman raise the point about there being a possible deduction on the korean gymnast's routine upon video review.... but sorry, that seems like grasping at straws and unless they video review all of the routines. if the issue is an error on the way the scoring was figured rather than a judging error then let's focus on the scoring error. fuzzy math, fuzzy math! still, this isn't really paul hamm's problem to fix.
posted by gspm at 12:35 PM on August 28, 2004
This has been said before, but officiating errors are made in every sport - sometimes errors that cost teams important games. I love New England Patriots, for example, but they made it into the '03 Superbowl thanks to some bad calls in the playoffs. Obviously, nobody said it was the Patriots' responsibility to give up their spot in the Superbowl because of the error of an official. Yes, it sucks for the South Korean, but bad calls have effected every country in the olympics at one time or another. Bah. Why does this bother me so much? I don't even like gymnastics. Clearly, the media has eaten into my brain. Please pardon the rant.
posted by Joey Michaels at 05:08 AM on August 29, 2004
and I thought figure skating judges were bad.