<p>They can be 15 as long as they turn 16 in 2008.</p>
<p>Btw…I agree with missypie on the Paul Hamm story. Breaking rules before competing is not the same thing as trying to ‘rejudge’ a competition that has already happened. </p>
<p>And the Nastia case is irksome and I hate the outcome, but the rules were in place before she competed. They are mathematically stupid rules (akin to recounting certain counties and not others…;)), but they were in place. Sigh.</p>
<p>The IOC uses AA for China. The world bends for China. China’s Politbureau gets what it wants. We are the losers. And we will lose a lot more if we don’t act now.</p>
<p>Paul Hamm didn’t cheat to win his gold medal. The United States government wasn’t complicit in cheating for him to win the gold medal, nor was the US Olympic Committee. He benefited from an arcane and ridiculous scoring system that is apparently so unwieldy and hard to use that not even the judges understand it well enough to avoid scandals at the Olympics. He was awarded a score and it resulted in him being awarded a gold medal. </p>
<p>The question of whether he should have refused the medal is really irrelevant. If during the course of a football game, a team benefits from a bad call, do you expect them to go the the ref and ask that the call be reversed? And if they go on to win the game, should they they ask that the other team be credited with the win instead?</p>
<p>The issue here isn’t about the athletes, it’s about systematic cheating and about a really, really, really bad scoring system and maybe tangentially about biased judges. Were you watching during the all around competition when the head judge hustled over to the event judges after Nastia Liukin’s beam routine, even before their scores were posted? Why do you suppose she did that? Personally, I think she was afraid that the routine would be underscored and wanted to make sure that the judging was objective. </p>
<p>I love watching gymnastics, but the judging and scoring give me a headache.</p>
<p>jaf got it right. NBC had a discussion about the judges last night. Many of them did not know how to judge because they belong to countries that don’t have the sports that they were judging. They just judged on the assumption that China is better because it is the host and has more gold medals.</p>
<p>“The “Paul Hamm story” is to unfair to him. When they examined the Korean guy’s routine, they discovered that he’d had one extra touch/hold that should have been a deduction, but the judges missed it. So with BOTH the routines had been judged again, the result would have been exactly as it was.”</p>
<p>The International Federation of Gymnastics ruled in favor of Yang taking the gold medal instead. It was only unfair to Yang that Hamm kept the gold medal. The story was reported as it had happened.</p>
<p>The thing we have to remember is that these young people chose to compete in a judged sport. They’ve been judged for years and by people arguably less competent than Olympic judges from Austrailia and South Africa. They’ve been on the winning end and losing end of scoring errors and quirks. I imagine that some athletes cannot stand the subjectivity and it drives them out of the sport. (One of my daughter’s dance commany friends used to be a swimmer. The judging at dance competitons drives her parents insane.) But at the Elite level, I think they’ve long since come to terms with lots of the quirks.</p>
<p>Well…say what you want…I far prefer to watch the gymnastics competitions regardless…than night after night after night after night of beach volleyball.</p>
<p>I think they should change the minimum age to 27 (until that age they are supposed to card you for tobacco at Fred Meyers), and there should be a minimum 160lb weight limit.</p>
<p>“Paul Hamm didn’t cheat to win his gold medal.”</p>
<p>I suppose “winning” by a mathematical error and looking the other way is a giant step above cheating. :-)</p>
<p>“The question of whether he should have refused the medal is really irrelevant.”</p>
<p>Easy for you to say, but not for the poor Korean guy.</p>
<p>“The issue here isn’t about the athletes, it’s about systematic cheating and about a really, really, really bad scoring system and maybe tangentially about biased judges.”</p>
<p>Have you heard about Nixon renouncing the gold standard when the French demanded to exchange gold for the US dollar in the 1970s? Now, that is real systematic cheating.</p>
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<p>No doubt about it. They are wonderful athletes. But everyone knows that they are used and exploited by China’s government to show its superiority.</p>
<p>“The International Federation of Gymnastics ruled in favor of Yang taking the gold medal instead. It was only unfair to Yang that Hamm kept the gold medal. The story was reported as it had happened.”</p>
<hr>
<p>I don’t know about an official ruling. My understanding was there was a ‘feeler’ sent out by FIG asking if Hamm would consider giving his gold medal to Yang if the FIG requested it. The USOC was outraged at the notion of tossing the longstanding “Rules of Play” and allowing a ‘rejudging’ of the event…and they refused to deliver the FIG letter. And, btw, those pesky Rules of Play also protected Yang who would have not rec’d a medal at all if he had been properly penalized with deductions for excessive hangs in his routine. Later, the case went before the Court of Arbitration for Sports, who ruled the gold medal was properly awarded to Hamm.</p>
<p>Just my recollection. (Obviously a hot topic at my d’s gym and much discussed.)</p>
<p>Also…sticky rules and funny math are why Nastia is walking around with an extra silver medal instead of gold.</p>
<p>Maybe I saw a different competition, but I saw the two “tied” gymnasts and am convinced that neither should have won. The second Chinese gymnast on the uneven bars, Yang Yilin, was robbed.</p>
<p>I agree, the bronze medalist, Yang yilin performed the best routine in the uneven bars. She should have been awarded the gold medal, instead of He or Liukin.</p>
<p>“I don’t know about an official ruling.”</p>
<p>According to BBC,</p>
<p>"The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) had ruled that bronze medallist Yang should have been awarded the gold but refused to redistribute the medals because the South Koreans did not protest until after the event. However, the three judges involved in the controversy were suspended by the federation. </p>
<p>South Korea appealed to the US Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee, but IOC president Jacques Rogge flatly refused to consider giving Yang a gold medal. </p>
<p>FIG president Bruno Grandi then confused the issue by writing a letter to Hamm and asking him to surrender the gold medal voluntarily. </p>
<p>He wrote: “The true winner of the all-around competition is Yang Tae-young.”"</p>
<p>Arbitration comes later.</p>
<p>StillGreen - the rules for protest are set in stone for many sports, not just gymnastics. If you don’t lodge your protest in a timely and proper manner, you are out of luck. It has to be this way, or the results would never be final.</p>
<p>StillGreen - I am aware of the sequence of events, but was unaware that FIG made an official ruling.</p>
<p>[SUMMER</a> 2004 GAMES – GYMNASTICS: EVENT FINALS; Hamm Ruling Stands, but Ire At Judges Rises - New York Times](<a href=“http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DE7DC153EF937A1575BC0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1]SUMMER”>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DE7DC153EF937A1575BC0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1)</p>
<p>I think what BBC is trying to say is that FIG agreed the start value was incorrect and that should they change it, Yang would move into first place. But they also refused to change it. My point is, at no time was there an official ruling that Hamm’s gold medal was improper. Also, an improper number of deductions had been allowed against Yang and if that error had been corrected, he would have been removed from medal contention. And there is the slippery slope.</p>
<p>Bay, either we stick by the rules or we judge with a higher standard of fairness and ethics. It is simply double standards, for those who stick by the rules on favorable outcomes but resort to fairness and ethics otherwise.</p>
<p>Idmom06, the BBC article said clearly “The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) had ruled that bronze medallist Yang should have been awarded the gold…”.</p>
<p>I think the BBC used incorrect wording and implied an official ruling that didn’t occur. (Perhaps if your source was FIG?) I believe an official ruling is something that settles an issue. Stating the obvious regarding one error of many that occurred in a single event is not a ruling. In fact, the only thing that would be considered a ‘ruling’ by FIG was their intention not to strip Hamm of his medal.</p>