[Dakota]

Josh Belzman has written an article for MSNBC.com that pretty much aligns with my postings in this thread, only as a professional writer, he says it better.

Here are some quotes:

Athens proved that for all its grace, gymnastics is a fraud. It is a competition without rules.

... only in a competition as contrived as gymnastics could a triumph like Hamm’s be sullied so quickly. ... This was not Hamm’s fault. It was the inevitable consequence of a sport grounded in arbitrary rules and completely removed from the Olympic ideal. Instead of the best athletes winning, gymnastics sees the luckiest ones win, the ones who can charm the judges the most or reap the biggest benefit from a scoring mistake or competitor’s mishap.

In a demonstration of just how silly this sport is, the judges huddled together and emerged with a new, higher score, in the process showing about as much backbone as an amoeba. Apparently gymnastics’ scoring standards aren’t so rigid after all,...

Another Games. More judging controversy. More whining. More tainted gold in a sport decided not by skill but by the whims of mathematically and ethically challenged judges.

Enough already. This farce that is gymnastics must be banished from the Games.

This is not sport. It’s a circus act.

Sports have rules that govern play. Competitors know the rules. Officials know the rules.

The crowd roared its approval. Dragulescu thought he’d nailed it. The crowd thought he’d nailed it. Commentators on TV thought he nailed it.

A “10” – give the guy a “10” for crying out loud!

And yet there it was: “9.90.” A good score, in fact it was the best score judges would give for any vault. But that mystery tenth of a point? We’ll never know where it went. Maybe a judge pocketed it as a souvenir.

And that’s why gymnastics has no place in the Olympics. We have no idea how this sport is being judged, where the points are going, what criteria is being used to determine a champion. Is it the landing? The bow? The smile? What does it take to win?

The results in Athens prove it: this is a sport where rules are made on the fly.

...judges are simply pulling numbers from a hat.

This is one circus act that has no place in the Olympic Games.

Complete article: In final judgment, eliminate gymnastics from Olympics