Yet Another Unnecessary Olympic Controversy, by the FIG

The FIG managed to do it again and set us all off talking about the scoring and how dreadful it was, rather than the performances and how brilliant they were.

I personally loved that Alice d’Amato won beam with the best executed routine.  I think that the sport undervalues good execution in general, and this was a moment when the judges got it right.

It’s a pity that there weren’t fewer falls overall in this final, but it’s the nature of the beam that people fall from it, and the major good thing today was that the champion was the one who stayed on the beam.  

I’m an oldie.  I used to love the hushed silence in the audience that fell as the best gymnasts were performing.  The first time I experienced this in person was in the Ahoy Stadium in Rotterdam, at the 1987 Worlds, when Silivas stepped up to the uneven bars.  It reminded me of Korbut in Munich, and Comaneci in Montreal.  It didn’t happen all that often, but it was a sign of respect.

We certainly weren’t used to rival gymnasts calling out ‘in support’ of others during their routines.  That would have seemed inappropriate.  Don’t the gymnasts want to concentrate on their own routines?  Did the ones on the apparatus ask the others on the floor to call for them?  Might their voices and words risk distracting their rivals from their work?  Would Liudmilla Tourischeva have shouted ‘stoi!’ for Nadia Comaneci?  Would it have added to the atmosphere?

There was the officially unexplained .3 neutral deduction to Simone Biles’ beam.  I’ve heard it said that this is because of her incomplete salute at the end of the exercise, but I can’t find a mention of that as a deduction in the Code - I am open to correction, supported by a link or from an authoritative source.  

Given all that though, I’m surprised in two ways: (1) that Biles didn’t know how to compose herself after a fall and a failed routine (she’s normally so stoic) and (2) that the reason for the neutral deduction hasn’t officially been given as far as I know.  Simone is only human and we couldn’t have a champion with a fall.  The neutral deduction made no difference to the medals.  

It seemed even more inappropriate later on when Simone commented on the silence and how distracting she found it.  To mitigate this, I do remember Arkaev (head coach, Russia) commenting on the noise of US spectators during team final at the 1996 Olympics, and Belu (head coach, Romania) saying that his team couldn’t even hear their floor music.   When in Rome (or Paris) etc.

And ‘no’ to music in the background during beam finals, which the American girls seemed to be suggesting might be ‘cool’.  The music is supposed to be in the head of the gymnast, and hopefully the spectator, and it’s evoked by the magnificent sight of that fluent, lyrical movement, not by Beyoncé’s latest single played at full blast whatever your cultural preference.  It’s a competition arena, not a supermarket.

Over on the floor, I quite liked what I saw, especially Rebecca Andrade, but not the bit at the end that once again looked as though (a) the competitors were tired out after ten days on the podium and (b) the judges had been tasked with ensuring a ‘different’ podium and not the one that everyone expected and didn’t mind how they did it.  Or perhaps the judges were a bit tired and had lost sight of the fairness and respect for people angle of their work.

To explain, after finishing fifth initially, American gymnast Jordan Chiles was granted an appeal that uplifted her score into a bronze medal position.  Chiles’ uplifted score denied Romanian Ana Barbosu a bronze medal.  Ana’s medal, which seemed legitimate and not at all prematurely celebrated, was her country’s first Olympic medal for gymnastics in many years, and was a well deserved reward for a beautiful routine with no weaknesses in it.  Even if the decision to uplift Chiles’s score was correct, it shouldn’t have denied Barbosu her bronze medal. 

A change in the finishing order of the gymnasts should not have been made at this late stage on the basis of a technicality.  I’ll venture to suggest that Chiles’ routine was not as good as Barbosu’s.  That Chiles’ ‘Gogean’ move, the subject of the appeal, had two or three degrees more or less in rotation, was a technicality that should not have affected the final rankings after they had apparently been made public.

Chiles’ appeal wasn’t noted on the marking system until after it was awarded, according to my sources, so when the uplift was announced everyone in the arena was surprised.  It’s remarkable that an appeal was even allowed at that late stage.  Remember Hamm (USA) v Yang (South Korea) at the 2004 MAG AA Olympics final?  Yang was denied an appeal that would have changed the ranking last minute, giving Hamm the gold medal.

Did anyone on the judging panel think to involve Ms Barbosu or her coaches quietly in the process of the appeal, in advance of issuing the news over the sound system and via the scoreboard?  No, of course not, and poor Ana, exposed and vulnerable on the podium, draped in the Romanian flag, collapsed into tears at the shock, humiliation and disappointment of it all.  The FIG should apologise to Barbosu for the trauma and a lot else (and, in a moment of supreme justice, finally give Raducan her gold medal, even if it means that there were two that year).

Meanwhile there was young Sabrina Voinea, whose magnificent routine seemed very harshly scored.  In particular the routine was deducted .1 for an out of bounds that I can’t see on any of my devices.  To give some context there is a picture in circulation that looks like an OOB, but double check it on video and the gymnast’s foot is in motion and doesn’t touch the ground.  

Surely the FIG shouldn’t be using fuzzy screenshots from an IPhone to make these decisions?  They probably aren’t, and the images circulating probably have nothing at all to do with the deduction.  But we haven’t been told.  There is a gap in the information, this isn’t a transparent process, appeals don’t seem to work the same way for all athletes, and this was yet another medal affecting decision that the FIG didn’t handle very well.   

It looks as though the discussions might go on into next summer and beyond as Sabrina’s mother, Camelia, is threatening to take it to the Court for Arbitration in Sport.  Can she appeal the Chiles’ appeal as well as her own gymnasts’ scores?  They seemed to go hand in hand, if you ask me.  

So as you can see it’s many a slip between the edge of the beam and the medal podium and it isn’t just about who the best gymnast is.  Certainly not in this case.  I’m glad to hear that Nadia Comaneci was clucking about making her presence felt in all sorts of places and getting herself kicked off podiums and so on.  I am very fond of Nadia and I think she has a lot of common sense and I want to hear of her doing lots more unruly and challenging things in future to protect her gymnasts.

Finally, I am a 65 year old retired University Lecturer.  I am probably becoming rather eccentric in my approaching old age, and I have strong opinions sometimes that others will disagree with.  I accept that I can be wrong, but often people don’t explain themselves very well and that makes me grumpy.  It makes me even crosser if they think that being rude or emphatic makes their case for them.  I’m more outspoken now than I ever was before : there’s no point in seeing a hole in the sheet without pointing it out so that someone can patch it.  I reduced a grown man to tears recently by following this principle.  

In general, generalisations are quite weak and you have to be careful how you say things.  I’m using square brackets here to point out the weaknesses in my own thinking - imagine the comments written in red pen in the margin.  

In my experience over the past few years [vague] young men mature at the age of 27 [unsupported detail and vague, unjustified reasoning] and if they are going to make something of themselves [over judgmental and vague] it will be at about this age that they begin to shine [emotive language combined with personal bias, vague use of the word ‘shine’].  

Young men are often [ahem] disengaged and ineffectual [no definition has been established of these terms, and there is no scale to help you measure them].  Young women get on with things [yet more bias and vague assertions] but young men dither and delay [what does this mean and how did you conclude it?].  

Which is what makes men gymnasts so exceptional.  Is there a better sport than men’s artistic gymnastics?