2004 Summer Olympics

[MyLifeIsBrians]

Please mark 'Urgent - Gold Medal Enclosed' on the outside.

We'll send you a receipt.

Thank you for being a part of our worldwide gymnastics family. If I should get up there to that Wisconsin area soon, I personally will bring you a realistic-looking copy of your 2004 Athens medal made of wood and gold paint. It looks just like the one we need back.

Best regards,

Bruno

I just read the parady. I love thate above part. So funny and so sad at the same time.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

And now the gloves come off - an article from SI:

South Korea appealed to sport's supreme legal body on Sunday in an attempt to secure the Olympic gymnastics all-round gold medal for Yang Tae-young, who was robbed of the title 11 days ago by a scoring error.

Paul Hamm, who became the first American man to win the Olympic all-round title, should not have been awarded the gold, the governing body of gymnastics (FIG) ruled last Saturday.

Despite admitting the error, the FIG refused to redistribute the medals and the Koreans have now applied to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to overturn the federation's decision.

CAS spokesman Matthieu Reeb said although its decisions are usually made public in 24 hours, it may take longer to evaluate an outcome in the Korean's case due to the technicalities involved.

"He (Yang) wants this very obvious misjudgement to be corrected ... that's not Paul Hamm's medal, that's his own medal," Korean delegation spokeswoman Yoo Jae-soon said on Thursday. "It is a matter of basic fairness and justice."

The gymnastics federation suspended three judges for the mis-scoring and even requested Hamm to hand the medal back on Friday in a gesture of 'fairplay'.

The U.S. Olympic committee reacted angrily to FIG's suggestion and said Hamm was the legitimate winner of the competition.

FIG admitted Yang had been unfairly docked a 10th of a point from his parallel bars routine during the all-round final, which left Hamm claiming the crown with a score of 57.823. Yang finished third on 57.774.

However, had Yang been credited with the correct difficulty score, the South Korean would have finished with a total of 57.874, 0.051 of a point ahead of his American rival.

Without the mistake, Hamm would have earned silver and Yang's team mate Kim Dae-eun would have dropped to bronze.

According to the rules of the federation, competitors can query the start value of a performance but it must be made no later than one rotation after the routine in question.

FIG said the South Koreans failed to lodge a protest in time. However, the South Koreans state they noticed the error immediately but were asked to file their complaint after the competition had ended.

I find it really annoying that most of these articles fail to include the fact that the Korean did not receive a mandatory .20 deduction. The Court of Arbitration for Sport already said they would not take the case, so it will be interesting to see how they respond. Last week, a CAS representative was reported as saying, "As a practice CAS does not review field-of-play decisions," in this article.

[Nothingman]

I find it really annoying that most of these articles fail to include the fact that the Korean did not receive a mandatory .20 deduction.

I completely agree, this is bothering me too. If you go back and correct one judging error for the routine of the athlete, shouldn't you evaluate the whole routine and any subsequent routines in the competition since they all influenced the final standings. And if you give one athlete this special treatment to ensure his final score is correct, then any of the athletes should be entitled to the same treatment if requested. This would allow the entire competition to essentially be rejudged.

Perhaps the best solution would be for the athletes to perform their routines with no scoring. Then they could seal the recorded performances in a box, fly them away by helicopter and judge them perfectly. Then they could show the helicopter with the box of perfect scores flying to the Gymnastics All Around Reunion Show/Live Finale and could reveal there. Then they could ask them all what they “really” thought of each other.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

Did anyone else manage to get the opening and closing ceremonies on DVD? They're truly magnificent, and touching in a spiritual sense. The pregnant woman singifying Gaea was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Now if only i could find all the men's swimming, rowing, and diving on disc. *Sigh*

Right now, nbcolympics.com is only offering a gymnastics DVD (which looks like a total rip-off since it's only 65 minutes long). The Athens Olympic Review DVD will be available in the UK on September 28.

[special_k]

Did anyone else manage to get the opening and closing ceremonies on DVD? They're truly magnificent, and touching in a spiritual sense. The pregnant woman singifying Gaea was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Now if only i could find all the men's swimming, rowing, and diving on disc. *Sigh*

Right now, nbcolympics.com is only offering a gymnastics DVD (which looks like a total rip-off since it's only 65 minutes long). The Athens Olympic Review DVD will be available in the UK on September 28.

I got mine via ebay, and they aren't the NBC versions broadcast in the states, but, rather from the CBC, and far superior in their focus on Athens and the games. I'll have to check out the links you posted. >_<

[Natasha (candygirl)]

The NBC broadcasts were pretty shabby during the competition as well as during the ceremonies. What irked me during the opening and closing ceremonies were the inane comments they made, interspersed with the trivia, facts, and historical stuff they tried to mention "casually." On top of that, they kept cutting to commercials, which I understand is necessary but I felt I was missing out on all the transitions between the sections. One minute they're all gathering wheat in the fields, then they come back from commercials and there are people dancing on tables. Several people compared the coverage from different sources and said that NBC was one of the worst, so what you have is most likely much better than what was aired here.

[Natasha (candygirl)]

The latest news on Paul Hamm as reported by yahoo:

Four weeks later, Hamm's quest continues
By EDDIE PELLS, AP Sports Writer
September 24, 2004

DENVER (AP) -- The flame went out nearly four weeks ago. The gold medal sits securely in Paul Hamm's childhood home in Wisconsin. For Hamm, though, the Olympic odyssey meanders on.

The victory tour for the gymnastics all-around champion will take an unexpected detour this weekend to Switzerland, where the South Koreans will make one final attempt to take away the gold they say belongs to them.
At stake, Hamm believes, isn't just his gold medal, but ``the way Olympic sports are done in the future.''

``You wouldn't know whether or not you won the medal until weeks after, until you find out whether or not someone's going to take it to court,'' he said Friday, his 22nd birthday.

A ridiculous notion? Maybe. But the Hamm controversy -- much like the figure-skating scandal at the Salt Lake City Olympics two years ago -- is proof that the Olympics are a sporting event like no other.

``It is weird that it is held to a different standard,'' Hamm said. ``How can someone hold the Olympics to a higher standard than the Super Bowl? I'm sure mistakes have happened at the Super Bowl. But they don't go and change the result.''

The Court of Arbitration for Sport, the ultimate authority in cases involving the Olympics, will hear Hamm's case Monday in Lausanne. Soon after, the panel will determine whether Hamm keeps the gold, or whether it should go to Yang Tae-young, who was mistakenly docked 0.1 points for the level of difficulty in his parallel bars routine in the all-around last month in Athens.

It will be the latest -- and probably last -- step of the Olympic journey for Hamm. Like so many of the earlier steps, he is disturbed that he has to go through it.

``From what I understand about what this court deals with, I don't see that this constitutes something they get themselves involved in,'' said Hamm, in Denver to perform in an exhibition.

Indeed, at the Olympics, CAS officials said they didn't involve themselves in ``field of play'' decisions such as the scoring error that caused all these problems. Given time to think about it, they changed their minds and decided to hear the case.

Likewise, the International Gymnastics Federation, known as FIG, wasn't supposed to deal in spur-of-the-moment reviews of judges or scoring unless a protest was filed right away. It wasn't, but FIG bent its rules anyway, suspended three judges responsible for the error, and opened the door for the South Korean appeal.

To add to the intrigue, federation president Bruno Grandi wrote a letter to Hamm asking him to voluntarily surrender his medal to Yang, a request deemed so ``beyond the bounds of what is acceptable'' by U.S. Olympic Committee secretary general Jim Scherr that he refused to even forward the letter to Hamm.

``I think that's one of the goals of going over to Switzerland -- it would be nice to get them to apologize,'' Hamm said, referring to FIG officials.

To Hamm, the most offensive statement in the letter was the claim that ``the true winner of the all-around competition is Yang Tae-young.''

``That's all speculation,'' Hamm said. ``You can't determine he'd be the winner if that tenth had been given to him earlier.''

The case came about after FIG's review of the judges determined Yang didn't get the correct start value on his second-to-last routine. He finished third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who became the first American man to win gymnastics' biggest prize.

If Yang had received the proper score, he would have finished 0.051 points ahead of Hamm, although that conclusion comes with the assumption that everything in the final rotation would have played out the same way.

Even though FIG acknowledged the error and suspended the judges, it said repeatedly it wouldn't change the results because the South Koreans didn't file a protest in time.

And even if the protest had been filed in time, Hamm's supporters say an inadvertent error by judges shouldn't have caused such a maelstrom.

``I've been surprised by the whole thing,'' USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi said. ``I've been saying from the very beginning that the competition was over the night the results were published. It's a bad precedent to look at field-of-play calls in court. There's a human element in sport. There are always going to be some things that happen that on review might have gone differently.''

Hamm points out that on the same review that showed the start-value error, there's clear evidence of a mistake Yang made -- missed by the judges -- that should have cost him 0.2 points.

If that error had not shown up on the tape, Hamm says he might have felt differently about the legitimacy of his gold medal. But the mistake, the way he fought back from 12th place with two events to go after falling on the vault, the criticism he took from many in the media for not giving the gold back -- all of it has strengthened his resolve and his belief that he is the real winner.

The USOC is spending about $500,000 to defend Hamm's case, including travel expenses and lawyer's fees for Hamm's attorney and its own four lawyers.

``We're extremely proud of what Paul accomplished,'' USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said. ``We plan to vigorously defend Paul's case.''

Hamm says he doesn't really know what to expect at the hearing. He's only glad that it signifies an end to his post-Olympic ordeal.

Although he has enjoyed the guest spots on the talk shows, the commercial shoots and the fame that comes with winning the gold, this has been a less-than-comforting victory tour.

``I feel like I had to win my medal in three ways, really,'' he said. ``Obviously, in competition. Then with the media. Then in court. It really feels like I've been battling this whole time.''