Ummm ... what on Earth are you talking about??? The three judges that you are refering to are suspended, they have got nothing to do with the tonight's fiasco. Although hopefully those from tonight will share their fate. Not that it changes anything.

And on the topic of those two non-Americans, it might be educational to find out a bit more about that Columbian judge. It's an interesting read.

Finally, the audience had their say tonight. Quite clear the message they sent I think.

For the quote I copied from your post above, I thought you were talking about the all-around competition for the men.

No, Leau and I were talking about the great Nemov and tonight's fiasco which stopped the competition for more than ten minutes due to booing and then earned the lovely Hamm so many boos and whistles that I do not think he will ever forget Athens.

It seems like some U.S. Officials are taking the stance that the bronze medalist's score on the bars was a tenth too HIGH, since the judges missed a mandatory 0.2 deduction (Edit: for having four pauses in his routine when a maximum of three would be allowed).

As for the Nemov situation, I shudder at the thought of what the Olympic crowd will be like in 2008, now that they know they can raise their favored gymnast's score by booing loudly enough. (Edit: I'm not saying his routine wasn't deserving of a higher mark (it hasn't aired on the West Coat yet), it just seems like an awkward precedent to set)

Having seen the event here, it seems like Nemov's second score was still too low unless that landing was a mandatory 0.2 off (in which case his score shouldn't be above 9.8 from any judges no matter how impressive his releases).

Regardless, Nemov was a class act afterwards in trying to get the crowd calmed down for the next gymnast (I don't think the booing was for Hamm so much as for the lack of Nemov)

(Edit: I think part of the reason for the disconnect between crowd and judges here is their lack of understanding of the scoring system. A gymnast could only get up to a 10.0 starting value, and a routine could barely reach the 10.0, have only slightly fewer mistakes than Nemov's, and still score higher. The crowd doesn't see this though. They feel that the extra difficulty in Nemov's routine makes it better than the routine that according to the current system would score higher.

I don't know if this is what happened here, but that is the most plausible thing I can think of)

Actually this is not the first time that the crowd has changed the result. People coming to these events are not that unaware of the system as you might think. Anyway, back to the crowd - I think it was the Moscow Olympics and it was the p.horse - I don't remember right now the name of the competitor but he was in the direct competition with a Russian (Shaklin) - the Moscow crowd wouldn't allow the competition to go on until the mark was changed and he went ahead of the home Russian.

That guy was perfect, I have never seen afterwards anyone do such a perfect routine, with all that was added these days. These guys wouldn't score a 9,5 if he were here. Anyway, the home crowd in the end got their way because the judges had to change the mark, which was a correct decision - they underscored him so that the home gymnast could win. Well the home crowd didn't want a victory that was not his. Now that is what I call a true human spirit.

About Nemov last night - people seem to agree he should have gotten at least silver, some judges here were saying how the sport has gone to hell, the whole things needs to be reconstructed because this competition was a sham! Nemov got blasted in advance, something he said himself. Sad, really sad.

I watched the competition last night and couldn't believe that after the first two competitors, Nemov got such a low score. I think the scoring system should be changed so that those doing a higher difficulty aren't penalized so much if they make a couple mistakes. Otherwise, it seems logical that you should do a lower-difficulty routine in order to minimize the deductions.

It seems like Paul Hamm has a curse - having to go after all the booing and then receiving the highest score (at the time). And yes, Nemov was wonderful through it all - he didn't sulk like Khorkina (I still am not spelling the name right) and he tried to calm down the crowd so Hamm could go on with his routine.

Ah, now I know why I always did sports like running and badminton - it's easy to tell who wins/loses...

Lol, you can't spell her name correctly unless you're using cyrillic letters so don't bother ... you know what's odd, I can't for the life of it figure out where the K comes from in her name ... it should be Svetlana Horkina (I speak a little Russian) but that is Horkina without the K ... just weird I guess

Yeah, just wait until you do have to edit a quiz that has a Chinese last name where there are 10 different corrections - each one saying a different spelling is 'right'.

But at least in Russian, there's a generally-agreed upon way of spelling it. (Now if I could just read Khorkina's personal website... Ah well.)

Ummm ... I speak a little Chinese too

But yes I know what you mean! It is a bit of a bummer, especially when you try to do the latinization of these languages. I sometimes laugh when I see what they do with Russian. There's no English version of her site? Shame really.

Nope- I forget the url, but if you search google for her, one of the top 3 or 4 sites is her personal site. It's a pretty site - the photo album is cute and has the bordered look like the photos are put in a 'real' photo album... But I can't read Russian. There isn't much of her site - mainly photos and a guestbook.

Pegazus999,
I've read the previous posts and agree with you 100%. I know I'm Canadian and supposed to be polite and all, but...

Take a look at this site http://athens.sympatico.ca/ and go down to the topic about the Canadians not filing an appeal.
We're doing poorly and I am ticked that we don't do a better job of supporting our athletes, but that's a different issue. My point is that it's too bad sportsmanship is falling to the wayside and that the good do not get what they deserve.
By the way, the CBC interviewed three gymnastic judges, who were in the audience, and they all said that Dragulescu should have received a .8 deduction for his stumble (none of the judges were Canadian). His score would then have been 9.0. Canadian niceness sometimes makes my Mediterranean blood boil.

Ah someone agrees

Seriously though, yes I see what you mean. Well honestly I cannot for the life of me understand why the Canadian Federation is settling for this. Look at the Russians - they have sent out letters to everyone in the chain of command so to say, up to Rogge to point the attention to what they say was a delibarate undermarking of the Russian athletes and they want something done about it (they said they could go to Court of Arbitration for Sport as well). They are making a huge fuss and I believe they are right. Canadians should do the same, with the Koreans joining them because this has gone way over the line, so much so that I truly believe that gymnastics has lost its purpose.

And yes, I do agree about the vault, actually it was one of the things the judge commentating the day after mentioned, how that was another "gift" only this time to Romanians. Sorry unfortunately for your Canadian.

I do wish that something changes after this but let me be totally cynical and tell you what I think will change - nothing.

Oh btw Mediterranean blood? You from the neighborhood?

Maybe what could be done to change the scoring is to give more value for difficult routines. It seemed all the ones performed were between 9.75 and 10.0. Perhaps change this to a 1-100 scale instead of the 1-10 that we have now. Then only increase deductions by a factor of something like 5. Difficulty will be worth twice as much compared to deductions than it is now.

Also, have more judges. It seems to me that having 2 or 3 judges leaves more room for 'misjudging'. Perhaps have a total of 5?

Ah I am just not sure ladymacb, I mean skating has more than 5 and look where they are. Lots of controversy there still, so I am just not sure. As I said I am not overtly optimistic ...

it sucks, don't it?

figure skating has nine judges
however, only seven scores are used (random pick)

should we have seven judges for each gymnastics apparatus?
and use only five scores?

like I said, anything that is judged will be subjective
anything that has a start value
and is then deducted from, even more odd

Hey peg, my parents are Maltese. I was born in Canada, but have been to Malta, via England, 11 times.
I actually envy the ability of non-Canadians to be so emotional in their beliefs and patriotism. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud to be Canadian, Canada is a great country and I wouldn't want to raise my kids any where else. We just need to stop acting like we need to accept what we're dealt and keep being the nice guys on the block. Shewfelt should have been angry, instead he's just glad that he may have inspired more kids to try Gymnastics. I'm impressed by his maturity at 16.