Why They Shouldn’t Take Away Paul Hamm’s Gold Medal: a Golf Analogy
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With one round to go, Judges scored South Korean Yang Tae-Young with the wrong starting value, and if they had it correctly and the next rotation’s scores turned out the same way, Paul Hamm wouldn’t have won the gold medal. Now the International Gymnastics Federation is asking Paul Hamm to give back his gold medal.
The rules go like this: if you don’t get your score settled correctly before the start of the next rotation, it stands. After they started the final rotation, there is no recourse for the South Koreans to fix the score.
It’s the same way in Golf if you’re playing match play (one-on-one against someone else): If you don’t get a mistake fixed or a penalty assessed for one hole before teeing off on the next, then too bad, you can never change it, even if it costs you the match.
The thing is, that rule is written in the same rule book and has the same importance as the rule that says it’s a 2-stroke penalty for going out of bounds, or equivalently, a 0.100 deduction for falling off the high bar. Just because it doesn’t have to do with skill or what you do while the ball is in play or the judges eyes are on you, it doesn’t make it any less of a rule.
And the spirit behind the rule makes sense as well. What you do depends on the standings right now, whether you’re going on to the next hole or the next rotation. You’re not allowed to claim that everything would have been the same had the standings been different before going on.
There’s nothing South Korea can do. They didn’t catch it in time, so they lost. That’s the way it goes.
