[Dakota]

All the brouhaha over the all-around gold in men's gymnastics got me thinking about a comment I heard/read about gymnastics (or maybe it was about figure skating - same thing applies).

"That's not a sport. It's an exhibition."

What do gymnastics, figure skating, diving, sync swimming, trampoline, ice dancing, and the Cannes Film Festival all have in common? And how are they different from softball, baseball, ice hockey, alpine skiing, water polo, swimming, soccer, track and field, volleyball, and table tennis?

In the first group, all of the contestants are competing against the judges. The officials (note: they are called "judges" not "referees" or "umpires") decide the contest. In the second group, all of the contestants are competing against the other contestants. The officials are there just to enforce the rules of the game.

In the men's all-around competition, so much is being made of the one objective thing the judge can decide - the degree of difficulty of the routine. Yet, this tiny speck of objectivity is sitting in a sea of subjectivity - but somehow it was the objective error that "decided" the medal. How silly.

The men's all around had 6 apparatuses (apparati??), each worth a maximum of 10 points, for a total of 60. Hamm's final score was 57.823. Yang's final score was 57.774 (he was the bronze medalist).

The 0.1 degree of difficulty error on the one apparatus for Yang did not "decide" this result. He received 2.226 points less than a "perfect" score v. Hamm's 2.117 points less than perfect. All he had to do was not make that little slip up on the horizontal bar that resulted in the score of 9.475 instead of a 9.650 (his score on the floor). THAT is what cost him the medal - but of course what really cost him the medal is the reliance on the judges to "correctly" decide the contest. After all, it is all judges scoring, not anything Yang did to try to vanquish his opponent, Hamm.

Somehow we are to believe that we should not allow the error on degree of difficulty to stand, but that the decision to dock Hamm .863, instead of 1.0 for his disastrous vault, is "legitimate?"

As I said, how silly.

In these events, there is no objective standard whatsoever, much as they pretend otherwise. Yes, there are things the judges are supposed to deduct for, but in all comes down to what the judge's bias is. And, I'm not talking about national bias, but style bias; originality bias; difficulty vs basics bias. They are all different. The exact same routine will be scored differently by this set of judges v that set of judges. Then, add on top of that the pressure from the "we hate them" national bias, and the situation is completely out of control.

It has now degenerated into an avalanche of protests and appeals. Can lawsuits be far behind?

All of the exihibition events at the Olympics, summer and winter, had better figure out how to make this more contestant v contestant sport and less contestant v judge show or they will kill the goose that is laying the golden rings.