Hearing Held In Hamm Medal Fight

Paul Hamm argued before the sports world's highest court to keep his Olympic gymnastics gold medal Monday, and the hearing adjourned without a decision from the panel.

Three CAS arbitrators convened to hear the appeal from a South Korean who lost the gold medal in the all-around at last month's Athens Olympics after a scoring error by the judges.

"We hope the decision will be made in the next two weeks," CAS general secretary Matthieu Reeb said.

Yang Tae-young wants CAS to order international gymnastics officials to change the rankings and give him the gold and Hamm the silver. Hamm and the U.S. Olympic Committee promise to vigorously fight Yang's appeal.

"That's why we're all here, to keep the medal," Hamm told Associated Press Television News as he arrived in Switzerland. "After it's all done, hopefully the medal will stay with me."

Both Hamm and Yang - and their aides - declined to comment after emerging from the hearing at a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Yang, who finished with a bronze, was wrongly docked 0.10 points on the start value of his next-to-last routine, the parallel bars. He finished third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who became the first American man to win gymnastics' biggest prize.

But add the extra 0.100, and Yang would have finished 0.051 points ahead of Hamm. That, however, assumes everything in the final rotation would have played out the same way.

"The issue is whether this (mistake) affected the result," Reeb said.

The International Gymnastics Federation, known as FIG, acknowledged the error and suspended three judges for the rest of the games. It has said repeatedly it won't change the results because the South Koreans didn't file a protest in time.

USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi said the competition should have been considered closed the night the results were published.

"It's a bad precedent to look at field-of-play calls in court," he said. "There's a human element in sport. There are always going to be some things that happen that on review might have gone differently."

CAS traditionally does not involve itself in "field-of-play decisions," such as the scoring error that caused all these problems, but Yang had nowhere else to go. The U.S. Olympic
Committee rebuffed its South Korean counterpart's plea for a duplicate gold medal, and is spending about $300,000 to defend Hamm.

"We're extremely proud of what Paul accomplished," USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge also rejected an appeal from the South Koreans.

"Our position is extremely simple. The FIG has certified the result of the gymnastics competition. The IOC has awarded the medals according to the certified results," Rogge said last month. "Paul Hamm was declared the winner and therefore he has received the gold medal, and for us that is final."

FIG announced Friday it is recommending new rules in response to the gold medal debacle, including the immediate suspension of up to four years for judges who make scoring mistakes. FIG also wants to revise its code of points, an extensive guide to the difficulty value assigned to every move and combination of moves.

"The code of points must be totally revised," FIG spokesman Philippe Silacci told The Associated Press on Monday.

USA Gymnastics will recommend the use of video replay in the review of start values. The proposals will be considered at by FIG next month in Turkey.

By Sam Cage