Protest rebuffed

Court of Arbitration for Sports declines S. Korea gymnastics case

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- The satisfaction of knowing they should have won gymnastics gold might be all the South Koreans get.

While the country's Olympic team met with lawyers Sunday to plan its appeal over the medal given to American Paul Hamm, the Court of Arbitration for Sport indicated it won't take the case.

Hamm won the all-around title Wednesday after judges incorrectly scored Yang Tae-young's parallel bars routine, failing to give him enough points for the level of difficulty. Yang ended up with the bronze.

"If it's a dispute related to scoring or judging it would be very difficult for CAS to review the decision of the gymnastics federation," CAS general secretary Matthieu Reeb said. "As a practice CAS does not review field-of-play decisions."

The South Koreans were expected to send the case to CAS on Monday.

At issue was the tenth of a point deducted from Yang's start value in the fifth of six events. Yang received a 9.9 for a routine that had been given a 10 start value in team preliminaries and finals.

He finished third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who became the first American man to win gold in the all-around. With the extra 0.100, Yang would have finished first. His teammate, Kim Dae-eun, won the silver.

The South Koreans said they protested as soon as they discovered the discrepancy and were told to write a letter of protest to the International Gymnastics Federation after the meet. But federation spokesman Philippe Silacci said no protest was made until after the meet, which made it impossible to overturn any results.

Harry Bjerke, an American judge who was on the panel but not one of the two who determined start values, said the South Koreans never came up to the table, or to the president of the technical committee, either of whom could have fixed the mistake.

"They waited until the medals had been given out -- until after the fact," Bjerke told The Associated Press. "It was a very unfortunate mistake and it happened at the worst possible time."

Acknowledging an error was made, FIG suspended the two judges who determined start values -- Benjamin Bango of Spain and Oscar Buitrago Reyes of Colombia -- along with the judge who oversaw the panel, George Beckstead of the United States. But the federation said the results will not be changed.

The South Koreans aren't satisfied.

"It's a very obvious decision," said Jae Soon-yoo, an official for the South Korean delegation. "We just want this misjudgment to be corrected."

The case brought back memories of the figure skating scandal at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002, when Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were given duplicate gold medals after a French judge said she had been "pressured" to put a Russian couple ahead of them.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said it was unlikely his organization would step in because "the IOC never intervenes in a ranking issue."

The U.S. Olympic Committee is studying the case, but spokesman Darryl Seibel said it's too early in the process to take a stand.

"No decision has been made on what action, if any, would be appropriate," Seibel said.