by mue 26 » Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:08 am
In all honesty it was probably the right decision. I think the whole problem was that Uchimura (the Japanese gymnast) was deducted the full amount of points for falling and failing to "dismount". However, he did actually land with two feet, so technically he did dismount successfully, just very very poorly, and the Japanese obviously felt that too many points were deducted. I don't know much about gymnastics but I think that's what it boiled down to yesterday.
Of course, it was such an anti-climax for team GB, and personally, I'm not a big fan of "appeals to the judges after the decision has been made". I'm kinda old school, generally I think whatever the first decision is should stand, even if it's a bad one. Think how crushing this must have been for Ukraine especially, to go from elation at getting a medal to nothing at all.
The only thing I am annoyed about in all this, is that now some people can't help but feel disappointed that GB didn't get the silver, when actually they should just be ecstatic we got Bronze. When we did initially know we had made bronze (without ever even hoping-let alone expecting- that Japan would mess up so dramatically) everyone was just over the moon. The last time we won a medal for team gymnastics at the olympics was 100 years ago, even the last time we qualified for the finals it was still 80 something years ago! The boys did unbelievably good and beat the odds. I was sure USA were gonna clean up yesterday, but it just wasn't their day.
I think that was the most exciting and painfully dramatic gymnastics I have ever seen. Now, it's all about Louis Smith going for a medal in the singles, come on son!