Sports briefs for September 27, 2004

Monday, Sept. 27, 2004 | 10:45 a.m.

World sport judges hear Hamm's side

Paul Hamm appeared before the sports world's highest court today in Lausanne, Switzerland, to argue why he should keep his Olympic gymnastics gold medal.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport convened to hear the appeal from a South Korean who lost the gold medal in the men's all-around at last month's Athens Olympics because of a scoring error.

Yang Tae-young wants CAS to order international gymnastics officials to change the rankings and give him the gold and Hamm the silver. Hamm and the U.S. Olympic Committee promise to vigorously fight Yang's appeal.

"That's why we're all here, to keep the medal," Hamm told Associated Press Television News as he arrived in Switzerland. "After it's all done, hopefully the medal will stay with me."

Three arbitrators heard evidence in the one-day closed hearing at a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva.

"We hope the decision will be made in the next two weeks," CAS general secretary Matthieu Reeb said.

Yang, who finished with a bronze, was wrongly docked 0.10 points on the start value of his next-to-last routine, the parallel bars. He finished third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who became the first American man to win gymnastics' biggest prize.

But add the extra 0.100, and Yang would have finished 0.051 points ahead of Hamm. That, however, assumes everything in the final rotation would have played out the same way.

The International Olympic Committee said Monday its evaluation commission will visit the Spanish capital on Feb. 3-6, followed by London (Feb. 16-19), New York (Feb. 21-24), Paris (March 9-12) and Moscow (March 14-17).

American wins medal

Rebecca Much of the United States won the silver medal in the junior time trial today at the road cycling world championships in Bardolino, Italy. Tereza Hurikova of the Czech Republic was the winner, following her bronze medal on a mountain bike Sept. 9 in the junior race at the cross country worlds in Les Gets, France.

Serena a winner

Serena Williams erased a match point in the second set and came all the way back to beat U.S. Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 at the China Open at Beijing for her first title in six months.