Tuesday, August 24, 2004
A surprising number of people have an opinion about the whole Paul Hamm situation, despite the fact that very few of them actually seem to know what they are talking about. Here's the deal as I understand it:
Yang Tae Young, the South Korean gymnast who was awarded bronze in the men's all-around, has complained that his parallel bars routine was not given its appropriate start value. For those of you unfamiliar with gymnastics, realize that not every routine can possibly score a "10." In fact, 2 judges must determine the maximum possible score for each routine before it can be scored. In Yang's case, the judges decided that his routine was a maximum 9.9. It turns out that this was wrong, and everybody agrees that the routine should have had a maximum value of 10. Deducting his errors from this higher possible total, Yang's overall score would have been good enough for gold.
Here's the problem with that: international gymnastics does not allow videotape review of any event. This makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. If every competitor could go back and nitpick every single mistake the judges made, it would take forever to score every meet. For example, tape review also shows that the judges failed to make a mandatory .2 deduction on the same routine that supposedly cost Yang the gold. Think about this: even though his start value could have been .1 higher, Yang's overall score would actually have been lower if you took every judging error into account.
That's why it makes sense for gymnastics to avoid video review, and why it makes no sense to me that people are calling for Hamm to give his medal to Yang. The judges made a mistake on Yang's start value, but you can't look only at that mistake and ignore all the others that were probably made during the course of the competition. The athletes are aware before they begin that some judging mistakes are probably going to occur. This mistake was unfortunate, but I'd venture to guess (especially based on the scores handed out in last night's competition) that it wasn't unique.
In fact, gymnastics scoring was weird all week. I have been watching the Olympics almost religiously--I'm way more into it than I thought I'd be--and for awhile, I could actually predict scores to within .1, most of the time. Then, during the individual competition, a LOT of discrepancies started showing up. This was nowhere more clear than in the rings final, when Greece's Dimo Tampakos was awarded gold over Bulgaria's Jordan Jovtchev after he finished a notably inferior routine. Tampakos was solid, but Jovtchev's moves were better and he stuck his landing, which the Greek failed to do. The judges were obvioulsy swayed by the crowd, and the Bulgarian got jobbed. Just like Alexei Nemov did last night in the high bar. But I digress.
The Cubs Embargo is again in full swing, with predictable results: 5 wins in 6 games. It's a proven fact that the Cubs excel when I pay no attention to them, so I will continue to do my part. Instead, I can spend my time dreaming about the day a white boy wins a sprint race at the Olympics--oh wait, that ACTUALLY HAPPENED. I guess there's always women's beach volleyball, eh?
Yang Tae Young, the South Korean gymnast who was awarded bronze in the men's all-around, has complained that his parallel bars routine was not given its appropriate start value. For those of you unfamiliar with gymnastics, realize that not every routine can possibly score a "10." In fact, 2 judges must determine the maximum possible score for each routine before it can be scored. In Yang's case, the judges decided that his routine was a maximum 9.9. It turns out that this was wrong, and everybody agrees that the routine should have had a maximum value of 10. Deducting his errors from this higher possible total, Yang's overall score would have been good enough for gold.
Here's the problem with that: international gymnastics does not allow videotape review of any event. This makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. If every competitor could go back and nitpick every single mistake the judges made, it would take forever to score every meet. For example, tape review also shows that the judges failed to make a mandatory .2 deduction on the same routine that supposedly cost Yang the gold. Think about this: even though his start value could have been .1 higher, Yang's overall score would actually have been lower if you took every judging error into account.
That's why it makes sense for gymnastics to avoid video review, and why it makes no sense to me that people are calling for Hamm to give his medal to Yang. The judges made a mistake on Yang's start value, but you can't look only at that mistake and ignore all the others that were probably made during the course of the competition. The athletes are aware before they begin that some judging mistakes are probably going to occur. This mistake was unfortunate, but I'd venture to guess (especially based on the scores handed out in last night's competition) that it wasn't unique.
In fact, gymnastics scoring was weird all week. I have been watching the Olympics almost religiously--I'm way more into it than I thought I'd be--and for awhile, I could actually predict scores to within .1, most of the time. Then, during the individual competition, a LOT of discrepancies started showing up. This was nowhere more clear than in the rings final, when Greece's Dimo Tampakos was awarded gold over Bulgaria's Jordan Jovtchev after he finished a notably inferior routine. Tampakos was solid, but Jovtchev's moves were better and he stuck his landing, which the Greek failed to do. The judges were obvioulsy swayed by the crowd, and the Bulgarian got jobbed. Just like Alexei Nemov did last night in the high bar. But I digress.
The Cubs Embargo is again in full swing, with predictable results: 5 wins in 6 games. It's a proven fact that the Cubs excel when I pay no attention to them, so I will continue to do my part. Instead, I can spend my time dreaming about the day a white boy wins a sprint race at the Olympics--oh wait, that ACTUALLY HAPPENED. I guess there's always women's beach volleyball, eh?
