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Fri. Aug 27, 2004

Subjective Sports

Early on in these Games, I said “One of the sideline sports at every Olympics is the ‘IOC idIOCy Competition.’ And I think we have an early favorite…”

I was referring then to the fact the IOC was trying to ban blogging, which, though stupid, didn’t really impact the Games themselves. Well, we seem to have a new contender from slightly outside the IOC, in the form of a letter from Bruno Grandi, President of the international gymnastics association, “FIG.” They want Paul Hamm to give his gold medal to another guy out of the goodness of his heart, because their judges screwed up. The letter ends, if “you would return your medal to the Korean if the FIG requested it, then such an action would be recognised as the ultimate demonstration of Fairplay by the whole world. The FIG and the IOC would highly appreciate the magnitude of this gesture. At this moment in time, you are the only one who can make this decision.”

Jim Scherr of the USOC got appropriately apoplectic in response, and flat out refused to forward the letter to Hamm:

The USOC finds this request to be improper, outrageous and so far beyond the bounds of what is acceptable that we refuse to transmit it to Mr. Hamm.

The fact is, Mr. Hamm did exactly what an Olympic champion should do: he performed to the best of his ability, he competed within the rules of his sport and he accepted his gold medal with pride, honor and dignity.

Your letter states “the IOC would highly appreciate the magnitude of this gesture.” You should know that upon receipt of your letter, we immediately contacted the International Olympic Committee and its President, Dr. Jacques Rogge, which expressed its displeasure over the fact the FIG would even consider placing an athlete in such an untenable position and strongly stated they do not support the letter or its contents.

IOC president Dr. Jacques Rogge said “In sport you have to deal with the human error. People make errors, but they are honest and they make errors in good faith, and you have to accept that. In this case there was a genuine and in-good-faith error by the judges, and there was no ground to have a second medal.”

The IOC has refused to consider issuing a “second gold” (and an immediate oxymoron), since they see this as a mistake, not malfeasance or corruption. It’s just the breaks of the game. The FIG admitted it was a scoring error made by three judges they later suspended, but they said they couldn’t go back and change the results after the competition was over. No more than you can change the outcome of the World Series when a videotape later shows the ball that was called “foul” was actually “fair.” Baseball has no “instant replay” for umpires. Or do-overs. Or give-backs. And neither do the Olympics.

Paul Hamm’s gold medal will forever have an asterisk by it. Not through any fault of his own, but because of the errors of others. One might ask, then why not give it back? Why not do what’s fair?

Because in Olympic sports that are judged on a subjective basis, “fair” is a moving target. Call them the Subjective Sports, the ones where there is a standard to meet, and you are judged on how closely you match it. Or sports that have a large aesthetic component where humans must discern small differences among the best in the world. It’s a recipe for robbery, for someone, every four years.

Early in these Games, several US gymnasts were told by one judge that their routines … the ones they’d been working on for months ... weren’t going to score well for some arcane reason, so they needed to change them. Stunned, and caught by surprise, they improvised to do what they had to do to stay in the competition.

Was that fair? No, but those were the breaks, and you took them. Just as you do when the breaks go your way. That’s the nature of the Subjective Sports.