Paratiritis
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Judges admit mistakes, but not bias
Judges re-calculate the score for Russia'a Alexei Nemov after he competed in the men's artistic gymnastics horizontal bar finals Monday. The crowd protested his score for 10 minutes and it was changed from 9.725 to 9.762.
ATHENS, Greece - Gymnasts called for a major change in how their performances are judged on Tuesday following a spate of disputed medals that have tarnished the sport, while a top official blamed human error for the controversy.
Just like gymnasts are human and can make mistakes, judges are also human and can make mistakes, Adrian Stoica, the head of the ruling body's (FIG) mens technical committee, told Reuters.
Stoica was the official who had to intervene in the judging process during Monday's horizontal bar final after the crowd stalled proceedings for almost 10 minutes when Alexei Nemov was awarded a low score for his spectacular routine.
Although the Russians initial mark of 9.725 was amended to 9.762 following Stoica's intervention, the incident brought to the fore the injustice many gymnasts have felt during the competition in Athens.
Something has to be done ... the judges are missing the Olympic spirit, they are stealing our work, said Bulgaria's Jordan Jovtchev, whose own appeal against the rings results was rejected.
Is it incompetence or bias? For me it's very hard to say.
So many old people are ruining gymnastics, they have to be tested.
The governing body of gymnastics ruled last week American Paul Hamm had been awarded the all-round crown in error after South Korea.s Yang Tae-young had been incorrectly docked a 10th of a point from his parallel bars routine.
Mistake admitted
Although the FIG admitted its mistake, the federation has refused to redistribute the medals, saying there was nothing in its rules to overturn the judges decision.
The South Koreans are appealing the decision to the sport's supreme ruling body.
;The judges should go back and evaluate the whole situation and see that something like this doesn't happen again,; former champion gymnast Nadia Comaneci told Reuters.
The gymnast shouldn't be paying the price for things like this.
The Russians are also lodging a forceful protest with the International Olympic Committee as they feel Nemov and Svetlana Khorkina who took a silver in the women;s all-round event behind American Carly Patterson were victims of biased judging.
But Stoica said: I am convinced that gymnastics; image has not been so severely damaged. All the world will come back to gymnastics.
Nemov had a spectacular routine. But as a judge, you must see in the release at the beginning of the routine, there is a slight bend of his knees, which is a deduction.
I didn't go over to the judges because the audience was booing. Sometimes there is a difference between public expectation and the judging process.
Events over the last week have revived memories of the figure skating judging scandal which hit the Salt Lake City Winter Games two years ago.
On that occasion, duplicate gold medals had to be handed out to Canadian runners-up Jamie Sale and David Pelletier in the pairs figure skating event won by Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. The episode also led to a major overhaul in the adjudication system in figure skating.
Although no impropriety has come to light in the judging of the Athens gymnastics, rarely has a panel of adjudicators had to bow to pressure and change their evaluation on such a public stage.
The gymnastics rules are imperfect, that's for sure. It's a human process and so there can be human errors, said Stoica.
There is absolutely no bribery here and if there was, you can be sure there would be severe sanctions.
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