New Scoring Hits US Gymnast the Hardest

OK, before I get stereotyped, like most guys who watch Olympic Gymnastics do, the hot girls are only part of the reason I watch them. In fact I’ll let you in on a little secret; I have been following gymnastics longer than I have been following girls. My mother (during the hockey off season) placed me in gymnastics classes at a gym back in New Jersey. It is something that I been a secret fan of for years.

It’s no secret that Women's Gymnastics has become one of the USA’s power sports. It is a sport that most Americans follow, where it’s not uncommon for that to be the topic of discussion the next day.

The topic has drawn a lot of controversy this year and it seems the topic has been judging. They changed the scoring, that in theory seems pretty cool because it cured the age old thing about which routine is harder, but the thing that’s questionable is that it’s up to the judges’ discretion on whether this “start value” is correct. Seems they still have issues there, as well as the same old thing that’s in any subjective sport, the fairness of the judging.

Last night’s uneven bars competition seemed to me like the biggest faux pas in the history of gymnastics. The clear winner should have been the USA’s Nastia Liukin, but due to judging issues, she tied for first place and lost that rank to a tie break situation. No one could fully explain the tie for a couple of hours after the competition. They gave the gold to a Chinese girl for that competition and Liukin had to settle for the silver.

This brings me back to the vault competition a few days ago, where Alicia Sacramone (OK I'll admit, I have the hots for her) was given a very low vault score and someone who didn’t even land the vault, ironically a Chinese girl, whom if I’m not mistaken was the same Chinese girl who took the bronze medal away from Alicia.

It’s still a flawed system that needs to be worked on and I hope it doesn’t come to bite Shawn Johnson (America’s sweetheart) in the beam finals this evening which is set to start in just under four hours from now but will probably not be shown live on NBC.