The point is "sportsmanship".

I understand Magician's point about the rules and when you can should make your protest, but in my mind that doesn't change the idea of "sportsmanship". If you KNOW that the other guy actually beat you, but that the judges got it wrong and awarded you the wrong medal, sportsmanship says that you should give it up and accept what the results should have been.

 

And if you know that your opponent should have lost points for an error that escaped the judges' notice, then what does "sportsmanship" demand?

If Yang truly committed such an error unnoticed by the judges, shouldn't "sportsmanship" demand that he concede Hamm's superior performance and offer him the Gold medal?

"Sportsmanship", if it means anything, means playing by the rules - all of the rules. To say that "sportsmanship" requires one contestant to overlook one error without requiring another contestant to overlook another error is absurd.

I absolutely disagree that Paul Hamm has any obligation - legal, moral, ethical, or in the interest of "sportsmanship" - to relinguish the Gold medal, unless it can be shown that the Korean team filed its protest (or attempted to file it and was thwarted) within the time limit prescribed by the rules. He was awarded the Gold based on the scores as posted; he knows who earned the Gold: he did.

The title of this thread is "American gets gold by mistake". If Korea did not file their protest timely, then the mistake to which the title refers is theirs. Under these circumstances the Korean team is acting shamefully, not Paul Hamm.

 

Too much politics in the ing olympics. They should give all those motherers machetes and shit and put em in a ring. Last one standing gets gold, the guy he killed, silver and whoever died before that guy, bronze. Simple. Done.

 

actually korea did make a protest or something like that or a complaint. Was reading an AP article about that. The big thing was that there was no replay. Its like this..........

Oh well Paul will always know that he didn't deserve that medal and for a competitor that sucks knowing it will be tarnished forever. Nuff said...............

 

Its an unfortunate situation for everybody. My take is to give the Korean gymnast the gold also and this thing will be over.

 

if he didn't give that medal back the same night, what's the point?

he's a tool for waiting that long.

 

I'm sure he doesn't believe that.

Many people don't.

 

man, if he almost fell on his ass and won the gold, i'd have to call BS.

that's like someone's motor blowing up and still take first place in a race.

 

. . . when everyone else merely has four flat tires.

 

To my mind, part of the point here is that the mistake was made in the judging of an objective part of the scoring. When scoring is subjective all of the participants know that there is a chance of error, and they have to deal with that, but where there is an objective way of measuring the result the participant should know that they will be judged fairly and accurately.