More Olympic Screwups
Now, I'm no expert on gymnastics, but I do know drama and the men's high bar was some great drama.

I have never seen such crazy scoring in gymnastics. It's like they took winos off the street and told them "if they stick the landing, it is a great routine." There was no accounting for the difficulty of the routines. We are talking about routines that are pushing the envelope in terms of things you would think humanly possible.

Aleksei Nemov proceeded to do unheard of moves with robot-like precision and then take a small step on the landing. His score of 9.725 was met with immense displeasure from the fans. Paul Hamm was forced to delay his start while waiting for the crowd to quiet down. After it became apparent that the fans would not be silent due to the outrage... the head dude came over the the judges and made them change the score. I don't know what was more outrageous - that the judges could score so badly or that they would allow the fans to change the freaking scores. It was bizarre.

Paul Hamm then proceeded to score a 9.812 and further outrage the crowd as he moved into the gold medal position. Igor Cassina then came up doing what was clearly the best routine of the night, but because of a small step on the landing, he was given the identical score to Hamm. With the tie-breaker rules, Cassina won the gold, Hamm the silver and Japan's Isao Yoneda took the bronze (he won a tie breaker with Hamm's twin brother Morgan.)

Strange night - both of the Hamms lose a tie-breaker, the crowd changes a score and the judges further prove they are inept.

For the record, here is how I would have scored the event.

Igor Cassina - 9.9
Paul Hamm - 9.8
Aleksei Nemov - 9.8

- posted by Chris @ 10:32 PM