Parallel Universe

South Korean gymnast Yang Tae-Young has filed an appeal with the International Court of Arbitration for Sport, essentially asking that he be bumped up from bronze to gold in the men’s Olympic gymnastics individual all-around. Y’all are probably at least passingly familiar with this brouhaha; an Olympic judge had assigned the incorrect “starting value” for Yang’s parallel bars routine, shorting the athlete a crucial tenth of a point.

A couple comments are in order. First, you always get this crap with the “judged” sports. Sports that you can count goals, measure with a stopwatch or yardstick are intrinsically superior in my mind. Given that, who besides the Olympic judges should be blamed for not responding to the error promptly? How about the South Korean coaches? In retrospect they say that they registered a timely protest, but there’s no apparent evidence of this and it sounds like “I’m trying to save my job here” type butt-covering.

Next: a prediction. How will the “International Court of Arbitration for Sport” rule on this issue? I don’t feel like I’m sticking my neck out in saying that they’ll rule in Yang’s favor. Why? Because the institution has the word “Court” in it combined with either “International” or “World.” Simple rule of thumb there: If it’s some sort of “world court,” it exists mainly to try to shaft the United States.

Of course I think that Paul Hamm should lock that medal away somewhere secret and safe. Especially given that if you really insist on revisiting Yang’s routine and redoing the scoring, supposedly the athlete paused four times on the parallel bars, a two-tenths deduction. So says Hamm’s coach Miles Avery. So give Yang the tenth he was shorted but then deduct the two tenths he wasn’t shorted but should have been, and Hamm is still golden. Why would any ruling body go back and correct one judging mistake and not the other? Any sane one, that is?