Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008

Steve Cameron: Are these judges biased or just blind?

Judges belong in courtrooms.

Not sports.

Any athletic event that relies on the whim -- or even some bias -- on the part of judges is bound to be a mess.

How many times have we endured it?

Remember some of those infamous cases where American boxers were flat-out robbed by judges who either cheated or were flat-out blind?

There was one case where a judge from some country in the middle of nowhere admitted after a match that he was physically struggling with the button you're supposed to push when a boxer lands a clear scoring blow.

Everyone just muttered and thought: "Yeah, right."

Gymnastics historically has been one of the worst offenders, and we're getting an absurd dose of it at the Beijing Olympics.

I'm beginning to think a Chinese gymnast could land on his or her nose during a clumsy dismount and the judges would look at each other and say, "Well, now that was a clever new move."

No doubt the American gymnasts knew darn well they were walking into a buzz saw with the Olympics in China.

The coaches would have warned them that perfection was necessary for everyone else while merely remaining upright was likely to produce massive scores for their hosts.

"I don't think the judges are biased," gymnastics guru and former U.S. coach Bela Karolyi told Bob Costas while trying to explain some scoring that seemed to make no sense at all.

"But they are human beings, they're here in Beijing with these huge crowds cheering wildly for the Chinese team, so..."

Yep.

So...

Maybe it isn't cheating, but it doggone sure ain't fair.

Ask Nastia Liukin.

America's golden girl, by far the most graceful and yet spectacular performer at these Games, managed to win the all-around competition.

She did it easily, in truth, but the judges fought her all the way.

Liukin's scores in a couple of disciplines were suspiciously low -- prompting an outburst from Karolyi in the TV studio -- and she needed a fantastic finale in the floor exercise to put the judges in an impossible position.

You could almost hear them thinking: "If she'd twitched or wiggled her toes or something, we could get to work here. But people all over the world will see this video. We're cooked."

And so they probably apologized to the Chinese delegation.

Fortunately for the host country, though, the scorers from hell got another shot at Liukin, and this time they managed to take her down.

Liukin won the individual gold on the uneven bars.

Forget what the record book says.

Liukin's performance was simply breathtaking, and she absolutely stuck her landing.

So then along came the Chinese hope, He Kexin, who delivered a decent routine -- a nice silver-medal effort but clearly one that contained some wobbles and imperfections.

And yet, somehow, the judges managed to award He a score identical to Liukin's.

That was crazy enough, but once the numbers were posted, you exhaled and decided that, well, OK...

The Chinese are doing a nice job hosting these Games. Let this little girl -- who cannot possibly be 16 and therefore legal for the Olympics, by the way -- have a share of it.

Not right, maybe, but at least Nastia's getting her gold.

But then she wasn't.

For reasons known only to the goofballs who run international gymnastics, they've instituted a rule that contradicts the policy of the Olympics themselves.

We don't do ties, said the gymnastics bosses.

Not only that, we have a formula to decide winners that is so complicated that -- with Einstein no longer available -- it'll be impossible to understand.

So they did their formulas and scribbled their algebra and...

Surprise!

They announced that He Kexin was officially the winner of the gold medal.

It amounted to a street mugging, with a gang of people in blazers throwing Liukin to the ground and ripping the medal from her neck.

We've seen it in sport after sport over the years, sometimes politically motivated and sometimes just silly for no reason at all.

But whenever judges get involved, you invite lunacy.

Give me a finish line every time.

Steve Cameron is sports editor of the Sun-Star. He can be reached at scameron@mercedsunstar.com.