Gymnastics' governing body extended the suspensions Friday of three judges involved in a scoring error that called into question Paul Hamm's victory in the all-around competition at the Athens Olympics.
American George Beckstead and Benjamin Bango of Spain were banned until the end of the year, and Columbia's Oscar Buitrago Reyes is suspended until August 2005 for "serious mistakes in judging at the parallel bars."
"It's a weird situation," Hamm said during a telephone interview while traveling in the Midwest. "I truly believe judges are doing their best to catch all mistakes, especially on start values."
The International Gymnastics Federation, known as FIG, also handed out one-year bans to four judges for errors made in the men's vault final, and gave letters of warning to three for "insufficient work" in the team competition. No other details were given.
The results of several events in Athens were questioned, but none caused a bigger uproar than South Korea's Yang Tae-young's protest of the all-around. Hamm won that event with one of the most spectacular comebacks in the sport's history, rallying from 12th place with only two events left.
|
|
| The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled in favor of Paul Hamm after Athens. (Getty Images) |
Add in the extra 0.100, and Yang would have finished 0.051 points ahead of the American. But that assumes everything in the final rotation played out the same way -- something no one can say with any certainty.
FIG suspended the three judges in Athens. Bango and Reyes were responsible for determining the start value, and Beckstead oversaw the panel.
Friday's action extends the initial punishment.
Reyes also was banned from serving as an "A" panel judge at the world championships in November. The "A" panel determines start values for routines.
"Generally, start values will get corrected," Hamm said. "In the situation with the parallel bars at this Olympics, it was very, very rare. It's kind of unusual that that actually happened. Most of the time in that situation, someone would have noticed it and it would have been corrected there on the spot."
Yang protested to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, asking it to change the results and adjust the medal rankings accordingly so he would get the gold and Hamm the silver. CAS rejected the appeal Oct. 21, declaring Hamm the rightful champion.
CAS also said Yang didn't file its protest in time. FIG says protests must be filed at the conclusion of an event, but there's a discrepancy regarding exactly when that is.
"What really needs to be done, in my opinion, the FIG needs to state specifically what the rules are, in writing, so everybody understands and knows," Hamm said. "That way, there won't be a problem."
In the vault finals, Canada claimed Kyle Shewfelt should have won the bronze medal instead of finishing fourth. Romania's Marian Dragulescu won the bronze medal, but the Canadians said he was overscored. After reviewing tapes, FIG suspended four judges: China's Xiao Guanglai, Venezuela's Jorge Sandoval, Portugal's Jose Mendez and Puerto Rico's Xavier Colon until Feb. 25, 2005.
It also gave letters of warning to judges Yuliy Kushenkov of Ukraine, Chris Grabowecky of Canada and Kazakhstan's Timur Amirbekov for their work in team competition.
