The confusion that marred the Olympic men’s team gymnastics final shows the sport still has progress to make as it seeks to limit the influence of judges and improve the credibility of the scoring system. At the climax of Monday’s final, Japanese superstar Kohei Uchimura was left aghast after seeing the score for his pommel routine, which knocked his country off the podium and into fourth place.
“I just thought: ‘It’s wrong, it’s wrong,'” said the triple world champion. The superior jury concurred, after an appeal was made by the Japanese team, and Uchimura’s score was increased by 0.700 — elevating Japan to second, dropping Great Britain to third, and denying Ukraine a place on the podium.
For the first gymnastics final of the London Games, the sport could have done without such drama, even if things were ultimately resolved without controversy. That was not the case at the 2004 Athens Olympics, when South Korean individual silver-medallist Kim Dae-Eun took his dissatisfaction with the result as far as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), but in vain. The scandal, caused by an inadvertent judging error, pushed gymnastics into a period of deep introspection.
