Gymnastics Crowd Boos at Olympics Cause Judges to Change Scores

The judges should also be judged. That thought was probably running through the minds of the outraged crowd watching the Olympic gymnastic competition, which was stained by misjudgment. On August 24, the men’s horizontal bar individual finals were in progress at the Olympic Indoor Hall. Russian Alexei Nemov, who won 12 medals at previous Olympics including four gold medals, took the stage amid applause. Nemov is strong in the men’s horizontal bar, in which he won a bronze medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and a gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Also known as “Sexy Alexei,” Nemov is very popular, but his score was 9.725 after an almost flawless performance that included six somersaults. After seeing a lower score than expected, the 15,000 spectators that filled the hall all stood up and began to boo. The booing echoed throughout the Olympic Indoor Hall and the crowd chanted “Nemov, Nemov.”

The Greek spectators pointed their thumbs down shouting “eshos,” which means “shame on you” in Greek. The Russian coach, waving his arms in the air, appeared to be rousing up the crowd even more. Coincidentally, American Paul Hamm – who won a controversial gold medal in the men’s all-around event when the judges made a critical mistake in scoring and gave Yang Tae-young (Kyunbook Gymnastics Association) the bronze medal – was next in line to perform. Hamm prepared to go up the stage in the middle of all noise and controversy, but went back to the waiting area with an embarrassed look.

The judges gave in to the booing of the crowd that persisted for almost 10 minutes. They raised Nemov’s score from 9.725 to 9.762. The Canadian judge that initially gave him a 9.65 raised it to 9.75, and the Malaysian judge raised the score from 9.60 to 9.75. Nevertheless the audience was not satisfied, so Nemov intervened on behalf of Hamm and politely asked the spectators to calm down so the competition could resume.

After all the fuss, Hamm went up to bar, which is also his main event, and scored a high 9.812, tying the Italian gymnast Igor Cassina. However, Hamm failed to win gold under the tie-breaking rule that when athletes are tied, the athlete with lesser deductions wins, and Cassina took home the gold.

Nemov finished fifth and said that he thought the competition was not fair. “I thought I deserved a bronze. I think everything was decided in advance.” It was another erroneous judging controversy in an Olympic gymnastics event.

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com