Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

I'm no holy roller and find the platitudes often spouted by "winners" in interviews kind of ridiculous - about as ridiculous as this.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/20/sport...nths-for-making-sign-of-cross-at-paris-games/

 

Seems pretty cut and dried.

 

But this is what USA Gymnastics did back in August, and CAS basically told them their decision is final, new evidence be damned.

 

I realize "The Olympics" is really just a number of various meets put on by the respective sports federations at the same time - but the IOC needs to step in when a federation makes The Olympics look this shoddy.

Edit - one thing I love about the clip is how involved Biles is even when she's not "involved" - I know gymnasts typically root each other on, but she almost seemed to be the one pushing for the inquiry.

 

The stunning thing about the Chiles matter is that the IOC has, on multiple occasions, allowed sports federations to fudge the results to repair their own botches, such as the 2002 Marie-Reine Le Gougne fiasco, and perhaps a better analog, a 1992 screw up in the synchronized swimming that benefitted the American wife of Blue Jays third baseman Ed Sprague.

However, since there are at least two other recorded screw-ups in the judging from that night alone (Biles and another Romanian), FIG, and by extension the IOC, seems to refuse to want to re-open the books. This may possibly be because an entirely different set of judging screw-ups handed American Paul Hamm the men's all-around in 2004 and screwed a Korean.

Also, as ridiculous as the FIG is, they're probably not in the top three or even top five federations on the IOC's shit list these days.