Talk:Paul Hamm

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World champion or not, Paul Hamm's Olympic Gold Medal, following his fall on the vault, would not have been possible without a significant amount of ill-fortune by his competitors. It's not necessarily a criticism of him either - that's why you play the game: Because sometimes, somehow, amazingly improbable things happen. :Iceberg3k 16:39, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

I don't really see the significance of mentioning this. You might as well say, "His gold would not have been possible if he had not performed better than his competitors" (or at least was judged to have performed better). His competitors' mistakes were no more a matter of "ill-fortune" than was his.--Mncuso 22:22, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I keep hearing about Paul Hamm being the first American man to win the gymnastics all around, but according to the IOC's website, that honor goes to Julius Lenhart, gold medal winner of the all-around at the 1904 St. Louis games. Is this a massive mistake by the news media or am I missing something? Rascalb 06:57, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)

Lenhart was Austrian, but since he had lived and worked in the US (amongst other places), his medals were counted as medals for the US. After he died, his medal wins were transferred (in a manner of speaking) to Austria.

Gymnastics_at_the_1904_Summer_Olympics
Julius_Lenhart (Deutsch Wikipedia)

--Wasabe3543 06:11, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

With all due credit to him, Paul Hamm performed very well in all his routines. But when it comes down to the crunch, the South Korean Yang Tae-young was the true winner. Never mind all the mistakes and technicalities and what not, the fact is, Yang Tae-young was not given the correct score. Surely, somewhere deep down in Paul's heart, he knows it's wrong to accept a gold medal that was given to him because of a scoring error. How can he live with himself? I understand how he feels but the Olympics is about sportsmanship and that's the whole point of the Games, not the medal itself. I think the world will respect him more if he were to demonstrate the true spirit of the Games. -Amsk 09:20, Sep 2, 2004 (UTC)

To Paul's credit, there is video footage of Tae Young doing something on his paralell bar routine that would've resulted in a deduction of I don't remember how much (but enough that it would've been too low for him to win, even if all the judging errors were fixed). Those points weren't deducted. In addition, the established rules of gymnastics meets dictate that if you have a problem with the scoring, you file it right away, before the next rotation. This means you can't wait until after you don't end up getting the medal you want, and leave and go home, and then just happen to notice on frame-by-frame footage that there was an error. I think that the rules are the rules, and that the world should just leave him the fuck alone about this (also, Hamm fans should stop their attacks against Tae-Young). There's also another factor here people haven't much looked at. This year, the IOC changed previous policy and said that they would not award multiple medals. Thus, people who would otherwise have tied for gold or silver or bronze were denied that because of the most minute of differences, which may not even have existed. Remember the medal controversy in 2002 with the ice dancing, and how the Canadian couple was awarded gold after the fact (but the Russians still got to keep their medal)? If the exact same thing happens in 2006 in Turin (unless IOC policy changes again before then), with the exact same people, the exact same routines, the exact same judges, and the exact same everything else, there will be no double medal. So really, the IOC is being bad here by refusing even after being begged by various groups and individuals to award a second gold to Tae-Young, they said "no double medals", thus refusing to diffuse the situation without loss of pride or respect of either boy, and thus leaving Paul to deal with angry people wanting him to give up a medal that was awarded him. Also, even though he numerically won, this will never feel the same to him as if the controversy had never occured. It also costed him most of the promotional deals that were offered after he was awarded gold, and made him new enemies and made some fans of his desert him. --Node 02:11, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It is impossible to retroactively go back and add to someone's score after the fact. When it comes down to it, gymnastics is not as objective a sport as, say, swimming or running, in that judges can be inclined to give their votes as relative to another person's score. Gymnastics scores are not absolute from year to year; the same routine can receive different scores; I doubt that Nadia Colmaneci could achieve her perfect 10's under the current rules. It is impossible to say what effect Tae-young's higher score would have had at that time. In the end the olympic judges messed up; and the korean delegation did not contest the score in the appropriate time. If anything, the equitable solution is to present two medals. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 13:40, Sep 2, 2004 (UTC)

With regard to the above comment that judges give "votes as relative to another person's score", does this mean that the error committed against Yang Tae Young (start value of 9.9 as opposed to 10.0) was judged "relative to another person's score"? In other words, was the error against Yang Tae Young based on subjective judgment?

Its not actually impossible to retroactively add to someone's score at all, we have precedent for this that was set in the womens all around in the Sydney Olympics. After everyone had competed on all four apparatus, those who had vaulted when the horse was set at the wrong height and wanted to try again were allowed to do so. Their new scores counted instead. This didn't affect any of the medals, but it certainly could have done, and one could argue that would have been unfair. Say Khorkina hadn't fallen from bars, presumably she'd have wanted to vault again. Its impossible to know whether Raducan would have performed better than she did on her later pieces had she known that she had to catch Khorkina.

Anyway, whatever one thinks of the Hamm situation, we do have some precedent in the sport for retrospective score alteration. However, on that occasion it happened straight after everyone finished their final piece, rather than two days later, so it did follow the established rules.

miss zara 03/04/06