Editorial: Rules are set in stone

Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2004 | 9:23 a.m.

All is fair in love and war, but not in sports, where wronged participants, in the end, must ask: What is the game we play and what are the rules?

South Korean gymnast Yang Tae-young was decidedly wronged Wednesday in Athens. Judges erred in deducting 0.1 point from the start value (the number of points a gymnast would earn if he performed perfectly) of his parallel bars routine in the competition for best all-around gymnast. Tae-young's start value should have been 10.0 but the judges placed it at 9.90. After his performance, judges awarded him 9.712, which theoretically would have been 9.812 without the error in start value.

At the end of the all-around competition, American Paul Hamm won the gold and Tae-young won the bronze. Just 0.049 points separated the two. Mathematically, had it not been for the judges' error, the gold would have gone to Tae-young.

Of course, there are intangibles. E.M. Swift of Sports Illustrated writes, "Yang might have relaxed with the bigger lead; he might have become uptight and choked; ... Judges, too, might have scored his high-bar routine differently had he been further ahead than he was at the time."

Paul Hamm should keep his gold medal and wear it proudly. Excepting a slip in the vault competition, he performed brilliantly and no error by any judge can take that away. And Tae-young should keep his bronze medal, and also wear it with pride. He, too, competed brilliantly but must accept that he missed the gold, however unfairly, by the rules governing his sport. The rules say protests against judgments must be made immediately, during the meet. The South Koreans never protested until after the medals had been given out.

Strict abidance by the rules during events may at times be unfair to an individual athlete, but the competition itself is protected. If they were allowed, after-the-fact protests would dominate the Olympics, and that would be unfair to everybody.