This judging flap is nothing new. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, the women’s all-around competition was sabotaged when incompetent officials allowed the vault to be set up a fraction of an inch too low. Given the precise nature of the sport, this sent vaulters crashing and burning on their landings until the error was discovered and women were allowed to redo their vaults.
Of course, by then it was too late. Some gymnasts already had competed on the next apparatus, altering their routines to make them tougher, thinking they had to score higher to compensate for their vaulting error. This led to mistakes on those other apparatus. But officials wouldn’t let them re-do those routines, only the vault.
In other words, the gymnastics federation made one mistake, and then compounded the error–just like this time.
Sorry. If you have four years to get it right, and in two consecutive Olympics you get it wrong, you lose. Your sport is suspended. You go sit on the sideline for a while.
But amid all the hand-wringing about gymnastics here, there has been no suggestion of such drastic action.
Why not? The gymnastics federation has the clout of those TV ratings, that’s why.
