Good to see the hometown refs are out in full force at the Olympics this year:
Greek fans had something to cheer about, too. Dimosthenis Tampakos sent the Olympic Indoor Hall into a frenzy on the final event of the night, winning gold on still rings. Tampakos was the first of eight competitors, and the hometown fans -- including local games chief Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki -- roared each time a score was posted and Tampakos maintained his hold on first place.
Jordan Jovtchev of Bulgaria won the silver, and Italy's Yuri Chechi took the bronze.
"It was the best moment for my life, and thank God for it," Tampakos said as music from the movie "Zorba the Greek" played in the background.
Zorba the Greek, eh? What singluarly American movie music are our athletes hearing when they win, I wonder? "He Ain't Heavy (He's My Brother)" from Rambo, by Frank Stallone? Or perhaps "Me So Horny" from Malibu's Most Wanted? Personally, my bosom would swell with pride to hear Vanilla Ice's "Ninja Rap" from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.
Sorry Greece, but your boy didn't deserve the gold. Both Jovtchev and Chechi had better routines, and both stuck their landings. To their credit, neither bitched about the result like women's gymnast Svetlana Khorkina, who placed second behind Carly Patterson in the all-around:
MOSCOW, Aug 22 (Reuters) -- Russia's Svetlana Khorkina, who was second to American Carly Patterson in the women's all-round gymnastics competition, has accused the judges of robbing her of the gold medal and said "everything was decided in advance."
"I'm just furious," Khorkina, who had been favourite for the coveted title, was quoted as saying in the daily Izvestia. "I knew well in advance, even before I stepped on the stage for my first event, that I was going to lose."
That's not a winner's attitude, Svetlana. I admit to being mystified by the scoring system used in gymnastics, but nothing I saw during the all-around made me think Patterson wasn't deserving.
The Russian was also favourite for the all-round title four years ago in Sydney, where her hopes were dashed after she crashed to her knees from the vault. It was later discovered the horse had been set five centimetres too short.
She said she was hoping Sydney's experience would cause the judges to be more sympathetic to her plight in Athens -- her third and last Olympics.
It's never a good idea to count on the Pity Gold. Then again, maybe the judges were just evening things out after that bullshit gold medal the Soviet basketball team won in 1972.
Khorkina confirmed that Athens were her last Olympics but she wants to remain in the sport.
"I'd like to work for the International Gymnastics Federation. These competitions have shown the sport needs a lot of changes," she said. "It should be judged primarily on grace, elegance and beauty rather than simply on mechanical tumbling."
Translation: "I want to amend the current system that favors short, muscular gymnasts in favor of emaciated divas like myself who draw unfavorable comparisons to a praying mantis when performing our floor exercises."
On Sunday the Russian will compete in her last event -- the uneven bars, where she is hoping to become the first gymnast in history to win three consecutive Olympic titles on the same apparatus.
Yeah, well, Khorkina was "robbed" again when she muffed the move that bears her, dropped off the bar, and ended up finishing with an 8.9.
A little murkier is the challenge being made by the South Koreans over the scoring in the men's all-around, where Paul Hamm took the gold by .049 over Yang tae-Young. While it does sound like the there was a screw up, it appears that the Koreans might have only themselves to blame now that the arbitration court isn't taking the case:
Harry Bjerke, an American judge who was on the panel but not one of the two who determined start values, said the South Koreans never came up to the table, or to the president of the technical committee, either of whom could have fixed the mistake.
"They waited until the medals had been given out -- until after the fact," Bjerke told The Associated Press. "It was a very unfortunate mistake and it happened at the worst possible time."
Acknowledging an error was made, FIG suspended the two judges who determined start values -- Benjamin Bango of Spain and Oscar Buitrago Reyes of Colombia -- along with the judge who oversaw the panel, George Beckstead of the United States. But the federation said the results will not be changed.
That's too bad for Yang, and it casts a bit of a pall over what's actually been a pretty interesting Olympics competition.
The good news is, we can stop keeping score of the number of times Elfie Schlegel uses the word "amplitude" (I counted seven tonight).
Vengeance is mine, sayeth Roy Jones Jr.. While I sympathize with Yang, I find it more than a little hypocritical for the Koreans to be bitching about anything when it comes to unfair voting... given the way a South Korean judge bent Roy Jones over in Seoul in order to hand an undeserving Korean fighter the gold medal in boxing. Jones clearly won the fight... and he got screwed.
Payback's kimchi, ain't it boys?
Dos Vedanya, Khorkina. As we say in America, "You blew it!" So suck it up and give my regards to Moscow. Unless one of the judges walked up and pushed you off that beam, you didn't deserve to win.
I just finished watching the men's high bar competition. Nemov is a class act and can teach Khorkina a lesson in manners. Corsina is incredible and deserved the gold but Nemov was totally screwed by the judges. BTW, Paul Hamm pulled off a spectacular routine considering the mishigass he had to perform after.
In my opinion, the Koreans' protest regarding the scoring fiasco doesn't hold up. The start value may have been wrong, but even if that were corrected, the korean should have been docked 2 10ths points for doing 4 holds in p-bars, when only 3 are allowed. With those deductions, Paul Hamm would still win gold. Funny how the Koreans seem to have overlooked that. While judging gymanstics is primarily subjective, errors such as start values and the number of holds in a routine are clear and not subject to interpretation. This really should not be a controversy since the problem could easily be resolved by reviewing the tape of the routine. The bottom line is that the quality of the judging was deplorable. I also think that Nemov got robbed in high bar. Corsina deserved the gold, and Nemov should have had silver. I thought Paul Hamm's performance was admirable, but his level of difficulty wasn't equal to that of Nemov's. Although Nemov's dismount wasn't perfect, neither was Hamm's.
I know I sound like a broken record, but the only possible course of action for both Khorkina and the Koreans is to plead for the assistance of Wayne Dolcefino. It's true that this dapper dan of news investigators usually holds domain in the Houston area only, but in a case of this magnitude I am certain Wayne Dolcefino would be willing to place his formidable powers of infotainment sleuthing at the disposal of the willowy Russian, ready to extrapolate the truth of the matter from the barest of facts! Wayne Dolcefino: he puts the 'urinal' in 'journalism', because as usual the 'i' is in the wrong place!
I bring this up only because this site is only 5th on the Google search, and that's too low.