Pressure points
Protests continue as officials insist Hamm is golden
ATHENS -- The booing went on for nearly 10 minutes while Paul Hamm, chalked up and ready, waited beneath the horizontal bar last night. "Wow," Hamm told his twin brother Morgan. "I've never seen this before."
Nobody could remember a night like this in Olympic gymnastics, when thousands of outraged fans, many with thumbs down, hooted what they thought was a low score given to Russia's Alexei Nemov, even after it was adjusted upward.
Meanwhile Hamm waited . . . and waited . . . and waited, until Nemov finally mounted the platform and motioned for the noise to stop. "It almost seemed like it was in a movie," said Hamm, after he'd pulled off a superb routine but lost the apparatus gold medal to Italy's Igor Cassina on a tiebreaker.
What Hamm has been going through the past week is becoming more like the theater of the absurd. Though he won the all-around medal a week ago tomorrow with the greatest comeback in Olympic history, South Korean officials still are trying to have a gold medal awarded to third-place finisher Yang Tae Young, who they claim was cheated of victory by a judging error.
Bruno Grandi, president of the international gymnastics federation (FIG), insisted yesterday the results could not be altered. "I don't have the possibility to change it. Our rules don't allow it," Grandi told the Associated Press last night.
But Grandi hinted that Hamm, whose winning score was never questioned, still should turn over his medal to Yang, who botched his high bar routine last night and finished last. "For me, the best situation would be for Paul Hamm to take this medal and give . . . ," Grandi said, lifting an imaginary gold from his neck.
Hamm said last night that he would not give up his medal unless he was ordered to. And none of the bodies who could make him -- the gymnastics federation, the International Olympic Committee, or the independent Court of Arbitration for Sport -- appeared likely to act.
The federation, whose rules state that scoring protests must be made during the competition, has said repeatedly that the result cannot be changed. The IOC has said it will not intervene in scoring disputes. And CAS has said it does not deal with field of play appeals. "If the athlete does not agree to give up his medal," said IOC member Alex Gilady of Israel, "there is not much the Koreans can do."
Yet talk persists about awarding a duplicate gold to Yang (the US Olympic Committee has told its Korean counterpart it was willing "to consider the notion"), giving him Hamm's, or pressuring Hamm to hand it over in the spirit of sportsmanship.
"Nothing is in my control now," said Hamm, who finished the competition yesterday with one gold and two silver medals. "I haven't heard any word from any governing body about another medal. I truly feel in my heart that I am the Olympic champion. I will abide by any decision FIG makes. If FIG decides to award a second medal, I will abide by that. If FIG strips me of a medal, I will abide by that, too."
While Hamm waited for resolution, his Olympics had continued with four individual apparatus events during the past two days. "It's just been very stressful," said Hamm, who had finished out of the medals in Sunday's floor exercise and pommel horse. "I've not only had to deal with the all-around matter, I've also had to continue to train for the competition."
Last night, after finishing seventh on the parallel bars with a score of 9.737, Hamm moved on to the horizontal bar, where he'd won the all-around title. But by the time he stepped onto the podium to follow Nemov, who'd done a routine with half a dozen daring release moves, the building was rocking with booing and whistling as the fans expressed their disapproval of the 9.725 mark.
"The judging was fine," said USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi, a former college gymnast at UMass-Lowell and longtime coach in the Boston area. "If you understand the routine and understand the landing, it wasn't that far off. I love Nemov but he had pretty big problems with his dismount. You do that, you're going to get deducted. But the crowd loved what they saw in the air and didn't understand about the landing."
Even after the mark was upgraded to 9.762 the uproar continued, long after Nemov had taken his seat. "I would like to thank the people for what they did tonight," said the 12-time Olympic medalist and the Sydney all-around champion, who ended up fifth. "Everyone should have understood by now that you cannot fool the fans."
Hamm, meanwhile, was standing in the ready position, an all but invisible man, waiting patiently for the crowd to settle down. "I did not take any of the booing personally," he said. "It had nothing to do with me. I was just trying to block it out and pretend nothing was happening and try to get back into the zone I'm usually in. I don't know how well it worked."
It worked well enough for Hamm to nail his signature three consecutive release moves and make a decent landing, good enough for a 9.812 that put him in the lead.
"It's never easy to do anything under these circumstances," empathized Cassina, who was next man up.
When Cassina pulled off a couple of stunning aerial maneuvers of his own, Hamm had to settle for silver. But he wasn't complaining.
"I felt like I came here to do my job and that's what I've done," said Hamm, whose three medals were the most ever by a US male gymnast at an overseas Games. "Other decisions have been made that drew me in. But I competed with pride and integrity." 