Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics – Men's artistic individual all-around

Men's artistic individual all-around at the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad
Gold medalist Paul Hamm (2010)
Venue	O.A.C.A. Olympic Indoor Hall
Dates	14–18 August 2004
Competitors	98 from 31 nations
Winning score	57.823
Medalists
Paul Hamm  United States Kim Dae-Eun  South Korea Yang Tae Young  South Korea

The men's individual all-around competition was one of eight events for male competitors in the artistic gymnastics discipline contested in the gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The qualification and final rounds took place on August 14 and August 18 at the Olympic Indoor Hall. There were 98 competitors from 31 nations. Each nation could enter a team of 6 gymnasts or up to 2 individual gymnasts. The event was won by Paul Hamm of the United States, the nation's first victory in the men's all-around since the 1904 Games in St. Louis and second overall. It was the first medal of any color for an American in the men's all-around since the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. South Korea took two medals (the maximum possible under the new rule limiting finalists to two per nation), a silver for Kim Dae-Eun and a bronze for Yang Tae Young. The scoring of the final was disputed; Olympedia calls this "the most controversial men's gymnastic event ever."

Scoring controversy

The Korean team contested Yang Tae-Young's parallel bars score after judges misidentified one of the elements of his routine. The effect of this misidentification was that the start value was recorded as 9.9 rather than 10. Had the start value been assigned correctly—with no other changes to any scoring—Yang's score would have resulted in his winning the gold medal. However, as noted by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as with many other sports controversies, (i) scoring the routine correctly initially may have affected the remainder of the competition and (ii) there were potentially other scoring errors that may have affected the results as well; thus, assigning who "would have won the event" but for the error is "something in the realm of speculation, not of certainty."

The judges on the "A" panel were responsible for determining the start value of the routine. This value is determined during (not before) the routine, as a gymnast may change their routine at any time (and may fail to perform elements intended to be part of the routine). The three judges on the panel were Oscar Buitrago of Colombia, Benjamin Bango of Spain, and head judge George Beckstead of the United States. The panel assigned Yang a start value of 9.9 after misidentifying a "Belle" element as a "Morisue" element.

Kim Dong Min of South Korea, one of the judges on the "B" panel (responsible for determining execution scores), spoke to Buitrago about Yang's start value immediately following the parallel bar rotation. Buitrago explained how the value had been reached and thought Kim was satisfied. Kim later said that he was not satisfied; however, at the time, did not ask Buitrago to pursue the matter further.

After Kim informed the Korean head coach Lee Joo-hyung of the issue, Lee raised the issue with the "A" panel and Adrian Stoica of Romania, the President of the Men's Technical Committee. Stoica presided over the Superior Jury, empowered to correct judging errors and control judges' scores. The precise timing of this discussion (during or after the medal ceremony) is disputed but was certainly after the competition had ended.

The next morning, the Korean delegation sent written requests via fax to Stoica and to the President of FIG (Bruno Grandi) for a correction in the start value. That afternoon, Grandi responded that the rules did not allow a protest against the judges' marks, but that FIG was analyzing the marks and would take action against any judge who had made a serious mistake. The next day, the Technical Committee analyzed the routine and determined that the correct start value was 10. The FIG Executive Council temporarily suspended Bango, Buitrago, and Beckstead.

On 22 August, the National Olympic Committees for the United States and Korea met with the IOC and proposed that gold medals be awarded to both Hamm and Yang. The IOC responded that it would not issue two gold medals, but would defer to FIG regarding re-allocation of medals if the scoring error was corrected.

On 26 August, Grandi sent a letter, via the United States Olympic Committee, addressed to Hamm and requesting that he return the medal, including commenting that Yang was "the true winner" of the event. Hamm had allegedly made comments in the press stating that he would return the medal if requested to do so by FIG. The USOC, however, objected to the letter and refused to forward it to Hamm, responding that under FIG rules (including finality of judges' scores) that Hamm was "the Olympic gold medalist" in the event; the USOC demanded that FIG retract the "unacceptable request."

Yang formally appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on 28 August. The CAS held a hearing on 27 September, receiving oral evidence and considering written submissions. On 21 October, the CAS dismissed the Korean Olympic Committee's appeal on the grounds that the appeal, coming after the end of competition, was made too late, and insufficient evidence of corruption or bad faith on the part of the judges was presented to overturn a strong preference for a "field of play" judgment rather than one made after the fact.

Background

This was the 24th appearance of the men's individual all-around. The first individual all-around competition had been held in 1900, after the 1896 competitions featured only individual apparatus events. A men's individual all-around has been held every Games since 1900.

Six of the top 10 gymnasts from the 2000 Games returned: gold medalist Alexei Nemov of Russia, silver medalist Yang Wei of China, fourth-place finisher Ivan Ivankov of Belarus, sixth-place finisher Blaine Wilson of the United States, seventh-place finisher Alexei Bondarenko of Russia, and eighth-place finisher Yordan Yovchev of Bulgaria. The reigning (2003) World Champion was Paul Hamm of the United States; Yang had finished second and Hiroyuki Tomita of Japan was third.

Colombia, Malaysia, and Tunisia each made their debut in the event. France made its 22nd appearance, most among nations.

Competition format

The competition generally followed the 2000 format, though with a significant change: the number of finalists was reduced from 36 to 24, with the maximum per nation cut from 3 to 2. The competition continued to use a preliminary (qualifying) round and a final round, with scores cleared between rounds (no carryover). The preliminary round used one optional exercise for each apparatus rather than requiring both a compulsory and optional exercise (as was done pre-2000). The team event scoring used a 6–5–4 format (each team had 6 gymnasts, selected 5 per apparatus, with 4 scores counting), a reduced version of the 1996 7–6–5 system, which reduced the number of gymnasts competing in every apparatus. Total scores and an overall rank were still used for all gymnasts, however. 2000 had also been the year where the tie-breaking rules came into effect, which resulted in far less tie rankings or duplicate of medals than at the Games before that. Each exercise was scored from 0 to 10; thus the total preliminary score was from 0 to 60. The final total, with six exercises, was from 0 to 60.

Schedule

All times are Greece Standard Time (UTC+2)

Date	Time	Round
Saturday, 14 August 2004	12:30	Qualifying
Wednesday, 18 August 2004	20:30	Final

Results

Main article: Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics – Men's artistic qualification

Ninety-eight gymnasts competed in the individual all-around event in the artistic gymnastics qualification round on August 14, by performing on at least one apparatus. Forty-seven competed on all six apparati. The twenty-four highest scoring gymnasts advanced to the final on August 18.

Rank	Gymnast	Nation	Prelim							Total
	Paul Hamm	United States	58.061	9.725	9.700	9.587	9.137	9.837	9.837	57.823
	Kim Dae-Eun	South Korea	56.811	9.650	9.537	9.712	9.412	9.775	9.725	57.811
	Yang Tae Young	South Korea	57.924	9.512	9.650	9.725	9.700	9.712	9.475	57.774
4	Ioan Silviu Suciu	Romania	57.398	9.650	9.737	9.550	9.737	9.312	9.662	57.648
5	Rafael Martínez	Spain	56.636	9.500	9.687	9.575	9.612	9.700	9.475	57.549
6	Hiroyuki Tomita	Japan	57.649	9.062	9.737	9.762	9.625	9.637	9.662	57.485
7	Yang Wei	China	57.374	9.600	9.725	9.737	9.512	9.800	8.987	57.361
8	Marian Drăgulescu	Romania	57.436	9.612	9.525	9.562	9.850	9.437	9.337	57.323
9	Brett McClure	United States	56.323	9.412	9.712	9.162	9.625	9.725	9.612	57.248
10	Roman Zozulya	Ukraine	57.273	9.525	9.412	9.575	9.500	9.762	9.225	56.999
11	Isao Yoneda	Japan	56.924	9.650	9.575	9.337	9.700	9.612	9.025	56.899
12	Georgy Grebenkov	Russia	56.148	9.587	9.125	9.662	9.437	9.650	9.362	56.823
13	Alexei Bondarenko	Russia	56.936	9.600	9.150	9.600	9.400	9.450	9.600	56.800
14	Yernar Yerimbetov	Kazakhstan	57.424	9.312	8.962	9.537	9.625	9.225	9.737	56.398
15	Luis Vargas	Puerto Rico	56.587	8.337	9.612	9.500	9.462	9.562	9.662	56.135
16	Ruslan Mezentsev	Ukraine	56.711	9.512	8.975	9.387	9.437	9.637	9.112	56.060
17	Benoît Caranobe	France	56.635	9.112	9.400	9.575	9.187	9.087	9.612	55.973
18	Igors Vihrovs	Latvia	56.423	9.687	8.862	9.187	9.700	9.000	9.437	55.873
19	Pavel Gofman	Israel	56.723	9.100	9.262	9.425	9.112	9.725	9.062	55.686
20	Eric Lopez Rios	Cuba	56.398	9.137	8.600	9.500	9.700	9.675	8.837	55.449
21	Sergei Pfeifer	Germany	55.987	9.312	9.025	9.587	9.087	9.162	9.212	55.385
22	Ilia Giorgadze	Georgia	56.012	8.737	9.587	9.487	9.337	9.662	8.462	55.272
23	Fabian Hambüchen	Germany	56.061	9.475	8.287	8.512	9.412	9.387	9.750	54.823
24	Andreas Schweizer	Switzerland	55.436	8.450	9.062	9.675	9.225	9.450	8.750	54.612
25	Sven Kwiatkowski	Germany	55.835	Did not advance—2 per nation rule
26	Dan Potra	Romania	55.749
27	Maksim Devyatovsky	Russia	55.611
28	Abel Driggs	Cuba	55.274	Did not advance
29	Adam Wong	Canada	55.160
30	Alejandro Barrenechea	Spain	55.098
31	Grant Golding	Canada	55.011
32	Jorge Hugo Giraldo	Colombia	54.997
33	Mosiah Rodrigues	Brazil	54.899
34	Igor Cassina	Italy	54.849
35	Rúnar Alexandersson	Iceland	54.798
36	Vlasis Maras	Greece	54.699
37	Oriol Combarros	Spain	54.662
38	Ng Shu Wai	Malaysia	54.649
39	Dimitri Karbanenko	France	54.561
40	Víctor Cano	Spain	53.987
41	Matteo Morandi	Italy	53.974
42	Denis Savenkov	Belarus	53.624
43	Filipe Bezugo	Portugal	52.923
44	Enrico Pozzo	Italy	52.812
45	Sasha Jeltkov	Canada	52.649
46	Filip Yanev	Bulgaria	52.586
47	Wajdi Bouallègue	Tunisia	52.511
48	Naoya Tsukahara	Japan	48.187
49	Takehiro Kashima	Japan	47.799
50	Guard Young	United States	47.611
51	Xing Aowei	China	47.499
52	Răzvan Şelariu	Romania	47.487
53	Blaine Wilson	United States	47.386
54	Robert Juckel	Germany	47.074
55	Xiao Qin	China	46.974
56	Vadym Kuvakin	Ukraine	46.824
57	Florent Maree	France	46.811
58	David Kikuchi	Canada	46.437
59	Kim Seung-il	South Korea	46.324
60	Johan Mounard	France	46.124
61	Anton Golotsutskov	Russia	46.073
62	Alberto Busnari	Italy	45.535
63	Andriy Mykhailychenko	Ukraine	45.412
64	Teng Haibin	China	45.099
65	Ivan Ivankov	Belarus	38.837
66	Huang Xu	China	38.761
67	Morgan Hamm	United States	38.662
68	Hisashi Mizutori	Japan	38.337
69	Daisuke Nakano	Japan	38.312
70	Kim Dong-hwa	South Korea	38.012
71	Lee Seon-seong	South Korea	37.899
72	Yann Cucherat	France	37.874
73	Jason Gatson	United States	37.799
74	Yevhen Bohonosiuk	Ukraine	37.424
75	Pierre-Yves Bény	France	37.312
76	Jo Seong-min	South Korea	37.274
77	Matthias Fahrig	Germany	37.249
78	Kyle Shewfelt	Canada	36.748
79	Matteo Angioletti	Italy	36.361
80	Marius Urzică	Romania	29.187
81	Valeriy Honcharov	Ukraine	28.899
82	Aleksey Nemov	Russia	28.887
83	Thomas Andergassen	Germany	28.836
84	Li Xiaopeng	China	28.699
85	Jury Chechi	Italy	28.499
86	Philippe Rizzo	Australia	27.350
87	Jesús Carballo	Spain	27.099
88	Christoph Schärer	Switzerland	27.037
89	Ken Ikeda	Canada	26.524
90	Yordan Yovchev	Bulgaria	19.512
91	Gervasio Deferr	Spain	19.387
92	Jevgēņijs Saproņenko	Latvia	19.287
93	Daniel Popescu	Romania	19.187
94	Róbert Gál	Hungary	19.137
95	Aleksandr Safoshkin	Russia	18.962
96	Ri Jong-song	North Korea	18.837
97	Kim Hyon-il	North Korea	18.649
98	Dimosthenis Tambakos	Greece	9.850

See also

• Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics – Women's artistic individual all-around

References

Citation

Electronic source

• Gymnastics Results.com