Moons Over My Hammy

Tuesday, August 31, 2004


I can't believe I made that the title. I just had to leave it.



So this Paul Hamm guy won a Gold All-Around medal in Gymnastics in Athens. Sweet. Some people probably even watched who weren't women looking at his ass (or dudes looking at his ass).


for those of you who were wondering


And after the media coverage swapped over to Table Tennis (man those Chinese are quick) we all hear that there was a scoring error, and one of Hamm's competitors, Yang Tae-young, was given an incorrect score that, if corrected, would have made him the winner of the all-around gold.

Many, including the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG), asked Hamm to give his gold to the Korean. You know, give it to the guy who really earned it.


But Hamm refused, with all the grace and dignity of a junior-high-schooler who comes across a money clip on the ground and screams "Finders keepers!" to the owner.


So I had this great little rant written, and I made a bunch of reasonably funny cracks at him, when I read that yes, Tae-young's judges incorrectly omitted a tenth of a point at the beginning of his routine, but he was also not penalized two-tenths for his four different holds in his routine (maximum of three).

As it happens, Hamm actually did win the gold. This only gets him some credit back, though, cause it doesn't change the fact that he was going to be a dick and refuse to give his medal back the entire time, only finding out later that Tae-young should have been penalized for his four holds. He didn't take the chance to be a good guy, and didn't think hey, if that had been me, I sure would want the gold I earned.


He would have been an international hero, spirit of sportsmanship and all; then he would have gotten his gold back anyway when they discovered Tae-young's other deductions.

So now it will always be footnoted that his medal was disputed. And even though that will probably be forgotten eventually, at least he doesn't have his own Wheaties box.



But I can't go through with all the cracks I'd planned at Hamm's expense, because my writing is so awesome that it'd just be too cruel. Instead, I'll just post this photo of Hamm in a tutu:



this photo is definitely not edited





And I'll turn the rest of this into an article berating people who form their opinions without searching out all the facts first.








You're turkeys.

posted by Scotty 2-shots at 7:26 AM