Worst Olympic Memories – One for Summer and the Other For Winter

When I sat and thought about painful moments I have endured over the years as a fan of the Olympics, it dawned on me that I could not pick a single one since there were, in fact, two major ones.  Of course, we all have our disappointments when our favorite athlete or team fails to win a medal but those aren’t gritty enough to warrant being “the worst.” 

The first comes from the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.  I was glued to the television set during all of the figure skating events but none moreso than the routine skated by Jamie Salé and, her partner, David Pelletier.  They were elegant, technically sound, devoid of obvious flaw and, most of all, they were confident that they had done enough to win the gold medal.  When their numbers came up it was painfully clear that they had placed second to the Russian team, Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze.  The crowd went into a frenzy and commentators openly voiced their shock.  Ultimately, French judge, Marie-Reine Le Gougne, confessed to being pressured to vote for the Russians and “Skategate” was born.  In the end, both teams were awarded gold medals.

Here’s a video of their performance:

My second painful memory comes from the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics.  For weeks ahead of time, I was in a near frenzy from excitement over watching male gymnast, Paul Hamm, compete.  When the competition finally began, I was mesmerized by his strength, skill and near total domination of the sport.  Unfortunately, he had a nasty fall on the vault and it looked as though his chance of winning a gold medal had all but vanished.  Fortunately (for him), other gymnasts were struggling and, after a first-place finish on the parallel bars, he was back in fourth place.  For the final rotation of the competition, Paul was on the horizontal bars and, again, finished in first-place which resulted in his earning a gold medal by a margin of .012, the closest in Olympic Gymnastics history.

The controversy began when the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) ruled that South Korean bronze medalist Yang Tae Young was incorrectly given a start value of 9.9 instead of 10.0 in the parallel bars event during the all-around final.  He then contested that, had they given him the correct start value, he would have won the gold medal.  He took his case all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport where his allegations were dismissed because:

• His protest took place after the conclusion of the competition, and thus was not valid under FIG rules.
• The judging could be considered a “field of play” decision, and could not be rescinded after the fact to change the results.

Gymnastics analysts also noticed that the judges had also missed the fact that Young performed four static holds in his routine which would have resulted in a .2 deduction, leaving him out of first place anyway.

All that really came of it was that Paul’s medal was tarnished, his reputation sullied because some people thought he should have given Young the medal and he lost endorsement deals.  My heart broke for him because this huge comeback and his incredible resilience was overshadowed by a dispute that should have never occurred. 

Here’s a video of his high bar routine:

images provided by Newscom