6 Responses to Dear Paul Hamm »»

Comments

1. i thought it was the russian guy who deserved it?

   it’s not really HIS fault..it’s the judges..although he should have enough decency to give it back

   Comment by carrie | 2004/08/24 at 14:10:53

2. There was a separate controversy with the Russian athlete. I was referring to the individual gymnastics overall. He won gold by less than 1/10 of a point and had the Korean competitor been judged appropriately in his routine, Hamm would have had the silver medal instead of the gold.

   Sure, it wasn’t HIS fault that the mistake happened, but I would think that he should own up and realize that it was, in fact, a mistake that he was awarded the wrong medal and do the right thing. That would be the right and fair thing to do, IMO.

   Comment by Chris | 2004/08/24 at 14:19:43

3. yea i agree. i’m NOT shocked though that the decisions were rigged in favor of the US.
   i have no idea whats going on in the olympics..since i dont have access to TV lol.

   Comment by carrie | 2004/08/26 at 01:18:38

4. Yeah. That’s the sad thing because you KNOW if the US and Paul Hamm were on the short end of the stick, that he’d be crying foul.

   Whatever. I hope his gold medal wins him nothing. No exdorsements, no sponsorships… Nothing. He’s already gotten more than he deserves, IMO.

   Comment by Chris | 2004/08/26 at 07:05:10

5. That’s b.s. There are rules in place and the rules were not followed. You look at the foul-up on part of the judges in isolation to the rest of the competition. That’s not fair. How many other screws-ups were there during the day that might have given Hamm a higher score or someone else. It is what it is! That’s one of the aspects to high-level competition.

   Comment by Kevin | 2004/09/02 at 15:24:32

6. I concede by the pure letter of the rulebook and Paul Hamm “won” the gold, but I still think that it was won more on a technicality than on pure performance. I haven’t heard of any other major screw ups that happened that would have kept Hamm in gold had the scoring error not happened (but I haven’t followed the controversy since the few days after the event).

   I guess my big problem with it is that he won on a technical issue where the Koreans didn’t file their protest in time (although I hear they tried and were told to file after the competition, which they did). I would have had a much easier time if the Korean guy got obviously screwed by a few bad judges since that’s the nature of subjective sports. But the prior just feels very… unsportsman-like to me. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

   Comment by Chris | 2004/09/02 at 17:42:16

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