When U.S. gymnast Aly Raisman completed her routine on the balance beam during the individual finals Tuesday, she hugged her coach and stared at the scoreboard, waiting to see whether she had done enough to medal.
When the score finally flashed, a nervous Raisman became disappointed.
"Oh, no!" her coach, Mihai Brestyan, proclaimed as he spotted the eerily familiar results.
She had landed in fourth place – again – and just shy of the medal stand for the second time in the Olympics.
What happened next would again thrust the judges, athletes and coaches into a heated debate over Olympic scoring.
As Raisman tried to hold back her disappointment, shouts came from the crowd. U.S. national team coordinator Martha Karolyi, her husband, Bela (who is no longer associated with Team USA but is a constant fixture), and vice president of USA women's gymnastics Kathy Kelly shouted and motioned for Brestyan to file a protest.
They believed that the judges hadn't accurately tabulated her difficulty score, specifically the connections between a few of her elements on the beam. Brestyan raced around the gym to get a form to fill out in the allotted time. Meanwhile, Raisman congratulated Catalina Ponor of Romania, who was in position for bronze.
Raisman and Team USA anxiously stared at the scoreboard as judges from the International Gymnastics Federation reviewed video of her routine.
"It might be a tie," Raisman said: a repeat of the all-around finals. Raisman had tied Russia's Aliya Mustafina, which in the all-around means the lowest score was dropped. Raisman, long seen as the rock of the team, had narrowly missed an individual medal because of the tiebreaker rule. She was worried it would happen again.
And Raisman was right, it was a tie. But her coach quickly reminded her she would end up on the podium because the execution scores alone, not the difficulty, were judged in the tiebreaker.
The scoreboard flashed the official result. The tiebreaker went in Raisman's favor this time, and she received a bronze medal.
It was perhaps one of the longest moments of Raisman's career. But it was not the first time this chaotic scene had played out in the Olympics - or questions about the accuracy of judging had come up.
For years, debate has stirred about how accurately sports can be judged, especially in the Olympics. Many have argued that everything is subjective. And in a sport that comes down to hundredths of a point, that can be everything. As Raisman knows, it can also be the difference between being an Olympic medalist and missing out entirely.
That is part of the reason the inquiry system Raisman's coach used was instituted.
"The inquiry was introduced along with FIG's new scoring system following the 2004 Olympics, where judging disasters marred the men's all-around and high bar finals. (The inquiry replaced an appeals process, which had a far lower rate of overturning scores at the 2004 Olympics, at least)," Nick Zaccardi wrote in a Sports Illustrated column explaining the system, using the acronym for the International Gymnastics Federation. "The FIG did away with the perfect 10 and redid its 'code of points' system with the more complicated two-pronged approach. The benefits of the change included eliminating potential bias in judging, the FIG said in 2005. Video review was also introduced."
Team USA's use of the inquiry in Raisman's case was the third in gymnastics during this Olympics alone.
Japan made a similar request over Kohei Uchimura's score on the pommel horse during the men's team finals.
Uchimura, one of the best men's gymnasts and a hero in his home country, was seen as a lock to propel Japan to a medal. But after his score was shown on the screen, it seemed Japan would be left off the podium. The scores placed China with the gold, Great Britain with the silver and Ukraine with the bronze. Japan, like Raisman, sat in fourth.
As commentators on NBC wondered whether "the greatest gymnast of our time dropped the ball," the camera quickly panned to the judges' table, where a Japanese coach was seen with money in his hand, filling out an inquiry form. FIG requires a payment of $300 to file an appeal. If the score is overturned, the money is returned.
Japan claimed that Uchimura had also been overlooked in the scoring: specifically, that he did connect a handstand before his dismount.
Japan challenged the score given to gymnast Kohei Uchimura on the pommel horse during the men's team final.
An announcement came in Japan's favor. It was one that greatly altered the standings. Ukraine was left without a medal, and the host nation was now taking home the bronze, something the home crowd was clearly displeased about.
During the men’s all-around competition, Germany's Fabian Hambuchen's pommel horse score was also protested, but the committee rejected the appeal.
The nature of scoring in gymnastics, similar to figure skating, has been debated as largely subjective despite attempts to correct concerns through recent FIG changes.
That's something Romania's Ponor, who lost out on a medal after Raisman's challenge, and her coach now know all too well. Ponor's face went from excitement to disappointment in the course of a few minutes. Coach Yuliy Kuksenkov who said after the ruling that "life is life," perhaps best capturing many people's thoughts regarding the routine disagreements about scoring.
"In athletics, 100 meters is just 100 meters," Sports Illustrated quoted him as saying. "Sometimes in gymnastics, it's 95 meters or 105 meters."
It's not all about gymnastics, though.
A scoring controversy in fencing last week left South Korea's Shin A-Lam in tears - and left her refusing to leave the piste. She appealed to judges over a delayed and stuck clock that had resulted in extra points being awarded to Britta Heidemann of Germany. Had she left the piste during the appeal, it would have signaled she agreed with the judges.
YouTube: A Lego re-enactment with the play-by-play, created by The Guardian
The South Korean was photographed sitting in the same spot for more than 70 minutes as she awaited the appeal and then refused to leave after it was handed down. She was finally escorted off the stage, sobbing.
South Korea's Shin A-Lam was finally escorted off in tears.
"I did everything I could," Shin told Reuters after the match. "They said 'your fencer has to continue the match,' so I had to accept the decision."
Accepting the decision may be part of it, but so is being prepared and willing to fight for the scores you believe are deserved.
U.S. gymnast Jordyn Wieber's coach told Sports Illustrated that he kept a filled-out inquiry form with him, just in case.
But as Raisman, Brestyan, Ponor, Uchimura, Shin and others know: It's an imperfect two-sided coin. You have to know when to make the call and be able to do it quickly in gymnastics, and sometimes you just fall on the wrong side of the ruling.
"I agree with the system," Brestyan said, according to Sports Illustrated. "The system sometimes helps. Sometimes not."
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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That poor S. Korean fencer got royally screwed over. There was a 15 year old volunteer running the clock of a semi-final fencing match. There isn't even any dispute that there was a timing error made and yet no appeal for this poor girl. What a shameful way to ruin someone's dreams and disgrace the host country.
Congratulations to USA Olympians. This proves that we are certainly the best still. Congadz to other countries also. Olympics is about world peace.
Why not just replay the cam and then a 5 minute interval, the wait will help commercial TV airtime and then all the judges can agree and analyze each replay. Nobody wants "quick results" anymore because we all know quick results are sloppy and stupid. go ahead, rush to your death who cares.
Curious how when an American athlete is involved in a judging issue CNN dedicates a whole story. When a Canadian team falls prey to an outlandish call by a referee in a soccer game against the USA it gets a paragraph mention in the overall glowing story about the USA's triumph. I guess it's all perspective. As for CNN's claim to be the "worldwide" leader in news, that is as ridiculous as some of the decisions by Olympic referees and judges.
Sorry for the Korean lady..
It was an unbelievable judge's mistake.
Read the account of the fencing story on wikipedia (look for Shin A-Lam). There was human error on the part of the timekeeper. Hardly a crime. The steps that the judges took to remedy a difficult situation are debatable. The clock could not be reset to less than 1 second. Would fairness had been better served if Heidemann had not been given the remaining time back again? Would breaking the tie on the basis of priority been better? It's not a black-and-white question and the judges should be given more respect for dealing with a difficult call.
The director also erred in letting Heidmann and Shin some en garde too close to each other. The distance is SUPPOSED to be such that with the weapon arms extended, the point of the weapons cannot touch....Heidmann kept moving back INSIDE that distance, and the ref let it go....poor strip management that probably gave Heidmann an extra 10th of a second...and in epee, that's a LOT of time.
It had nothing to do with the time being less than a second. The winning hit took 0.83 seconds and that does not include the German fencer's two first two moves or the first step before the first 2 moves. Why is the judge allowed to count down from 1 second in her head when there are digital clocks everywhere on the fencing stage? She was clearly robbed by when even though the time already hit 0 once, the AUSTRIAN judge ordered 1 more second be put back on the clock. If you watched the match you would clearly see them giving the match to the German fencer. Politics and nationality aside, Olympics is drummed up as a place to fulfill dreams and represent your country. Is it not just a multi-billion dollar corrupt scheme? Just like UEFA and FIFA. These organizations are constantly being outed for corruption, and no one does anything about it. Why? Billions of reasons. The S. Korean got robbed? No, the children who watch these games and get inspired are getting robbed. Robbed of inspiration and hope.
The rule should be in a mechanical or electronic failure a case for a rematch could be made. Basically, it's
not fair, period.
Nope....the rules for the sport don't allow for that....repeating the last TOUCH yes....but not the whole bout.
That's why I prefer the sports that require the least amount of judging; like track and swimming. There's just too much cheating going on.
Assuming judges are not biased, one has to assume they are fair without showing favoritism. There are no participation medals in life, but only for liberals!
Gee, so if you assume that the judges are not biased, then one also has to assume that they're not showing favoritism? Thanks for that brilliant piece of insight, Mr. Conservative.
Why should the quality of olympic judging be any different from criminal or civil judging. Same human shortcomings, same politics, same biases.
You do know that the Olympics are in London, right?
The IFK for holding the ball too long was absolutely crazy. I refereed soccer for 15 years, and cannot recall ever making that call. Yeah, GK's often hold the ball longer than six seconds. Big deal. Normally, a ref extends time, and tells the GK to get the ball into play. To give the ball to the other team in the PA in that situation was not the proper thing to do (according to the spirit of the game). The Canadians played brilliantly and were perhaps the better team that day. If you want to see what the world soccer bodies thought of the call, watch and see if that center referee ever gets to call an important international game again.
I have a feeling that the penalty for kicking an opposing player in the ribs and then taking a step back just to stomp on her head would probably have been worse. Canada should consider themselves lucky.
If you ask me there's no way to tell in gymnastics, it's all about the same at that level. That's why they deduct so much for the dismount. They know the dismount is a "crap shoot" basically you have to hit it just right so as not to "hop" a few inches. Then they say "well this one had a better dismount."
The dismount is actually a relatively low % of the total deductions. The common "step" deductions are .1 or .3 wheras it's very common to have a close to a full point to two points in deductions at even the highest level of performance.
Trained judges, or anyone who has been around the sport for years for that matter, can see MANY things that the casual "I watch gymnastics during the Olympics" viewer sees.
Not to mention the difficulty scores between even the top 8 competators can swing another full point or more. People don't consider that many competators are starting at a considerably lower score before they even begin. The dismount is an important component, but it is at the end of the day just one piece of the puzzle that makes up winning scores.
Awwww...poor babies.
Oh yeah, poor babies. If you were at work and they docked your pay for a day because of an error with the clock at your work, would you just be happy they let you come in? I doubt it. Now multiply that by a million as these people have been preparing for this one event for years.
When you are the most powerful country on the planet, you too can be 'right' all-the-time.