Hamm Protects Gold Medal in Front of CAS: In a 12-hour hearing in Switzerland, Olympic gold medalist Paul Hamm defended his all-around gymnastics title in front of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. A three-member arbitration panel heard arguments from South Korean gymnast Yang Tae-young that a judge's error cost meant that he should have won the gold medal instead of Hamm.



I have discussed before the problems with this, but it is worth going into again. Procedurally, the Koreans did not file their protest in the time permitted by the rules. If you file a lawsuit after the statute of limitations has lapsed, the case will be dismissed. The rules are there for a reason and must be followed.



But, even more importantly, on-field calls cannot and should not be reviewed after the competition has ended. Judges, like umpires and referees, are humans and mistakes will be made. During a quarterfinal match between Jennifer Capriati and Serena Williams in the US Open, the chair umpire awarded a point to Capriati, even though Williams had won the point. Capriati went on to win the match. Did the officials make a mistake? Yes. But can you imagine anyone changing the result of that match as a result? No, because once a competition has ended, the results have been tallied and medals have been awarded, nothing other than fraud should change the outcome.



In addition, what many reports of this incident have missed is that the judges also missed a deduction that should have been taken during Young's routine. An NBC television commentator noticed the defect in the routine, but the judges did not. If that had been scored correctly, Young would have finished fourth, out of the medals, even with the proper starting value. So even if the routine were to be re-scored, Young should lose.



But the arbitrators must make a stand in this case. Appeals must be limited to rulings on off-field conflicts, such as drug tests. Life is not fair and judges are not perfect. But what happens on the field must stay on the field, or results can never be final, and the spirit of competition will be rendered meaningless.

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