The news that USA gymnast Jordan Chiles will have to surrender her bronze medal, despite potential evidence that could refute the principal issue, surely rings familiar for Wisconsinites who followed the Olympics two decades ago.
Waukesha native Paul Hamm won the men’s all-around gymnastics title at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, but he had to wait weeks after the Olympics to learn if that title was going to stick. His journey included a court hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with a ruling issued two months after the Olympics ended.
Chiles took bronze in floor exercise at the 2024 Paris Games, needing a boost from a last-second scoring change resulting from an inquiry formally issued by coaches after her routine. Romania’s gymnastics federation, representing Ana Barbosu, who initially had been shown to win bronze, argued that the appeal came four seconds past the allotted one minute to make such a request. The CAS ultimately agreed, a decision that appears likely the final ruling and one that will declare Barbosu the official bronze medalist.
On Sunday, USA Gymnastics announced that it had found new video footage that essentially disproved the Romanian Gymnastics Federation’s timeline, but the CAS said it won’t review the new evidence and revise its ruling.
Here’s how Hamm’s drama played out in 2004:
Paul Hamm wins gold in the narrowest men’s gymnastics finish in Olympic history
Hamm won the gold and two silvers in Athens, in the high bar and with the men’s team, winning that portion with his twin brother, Morgan. Both graduated from Waukesha South.
Paul’s narrow win (.012 points) in the all-around standings was called into question over a scoring issue; the international gymnastics federation believed South Korean bronze medalist Yang Tae-Young was incorrectly given a lower start value on his routine in the parallel bars, an error that potentially accounted for the difference between bronze and gold.
Judges mistakenly gave Yang’s routine a start value of 9.9 and not 10.0, the maximum score for a perfect routine.
Everyone has an opinion on what should happen next
The angles to the controversy were many. Did South Korea wage a protest too late, waiting until after the medals were assigned? Should Hamm give his medal back if it was discovered the scoring issue really did impact results? Could Hamm have adjusted his own routine if he knew, in real time, what Tae-Young’s score had been? That was a chief part of the dilemma, with gymnastics experts noting that the real-time score influenced subsequent difficulty in performances.
The U.S. Olympic Committee proposed giving golds to both Hamm and Tae-Young, but International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge declined, saying he would, however, honor any decision from the Federation of International Gymnastics (FIG) if it decided to re-allocate the medals. The FIG initially declined to do so because it felt the appeal was filed too late.
FIG president says results were incorrect and asked Hamm to return his gold medal
FIG president Bruno Grandi asked Hamm to willingly surrender his gold and in a letter said, “The true winner of the all-around competition is Yang Tae Young.” The USOC, insulted by that letter, refused the action and ended its stance that multiple gold medals would be acceptable. Yang and the Korean Olympic Committee appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport a month later.
The case became widely watched, with many believing a reversal could catalyze litigation over rulings in numerous sports, all the way down to umpiring decision at the youth level.
Court rules in Hamm’s favor, and he keeps the gold
Ultimately, the Olympic gymnastics judges in the fiasco were suspended, and the gymnastics scoring system was altered for future games to ensure nothing like it happened again. But the result wasn’t changed. The CAS set the results in stone, saying, “An error identified with the benefit of hindsight, whether admitted or not, cannot be a ground for reversing a result of a competition.”
Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Hamm said after the CAS ruling, “There’s been a lot of fighting for this medal. I felt like I won it three times already: in the competition, with the media and, finally, in the court.”
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