International Gymnast:
Shao Bin and Korean judge Nam Seung Ku comprised the Difficulty (D) panel during the floor exercise final at November’s Asian Games in Guangzhou. The FIG announced this week it had launched a disciplinary case against Shao for altering the Execution (E) score in order to move China’s Zhang Chenglong into a tie for the gold medal with Korea’s Kim Soo Myun.
(Shao Bin) insists he acted correctly to produce a fair result. …
Shao, the dean of the Physical Education College at Shanghai University, told newspaper “Sports Weekly” that he and Nam agreed the Execution score needed to be changed because Zhang was underscored. …
Shao said that both he and Kim agreed the change was necessary to produce the correct result.
read more on IG – Chinese Judge Defends Changing ‘Unfair’ Score
Even if he did the wrong thing for the right reason, … Even if the Korean judge agreed, … Shao Bin will still be found guilty, I predict. The difficulty judges cannot change scores of execution judges. Grandi will insist.
On the second big issue from this controversy:
FIG Men’s Technical Committee President Adrian Stoica was present to supervise the competition. …
In an earlier interview with Chinese news portal Tencent, Chinese team manager Ye Zhennan blasted Stoica and said he should be held accountable for the incident.
“[I want to ask Stoica,] why did you release the score when it was submitted?” Ye said. “Why did you sign off on the final ranking list? If one mistake is forgivable, what about two? And then you accuse the judge to FIG? Who is going to launch an investigative procedure against you?” …
Stoica declined to respond directly to Ye’s comments, noting to IG that the investigation is still active …
In the IG article Stoica’s report from the competition is quoted. But after reading it, I’m still uncertain why Stoica signed off on the results knowing at the time that he would later be sanctioning Shao Bin for that incident.
Read more commentary on The Chinese Gymnastics Blog, the site most closely following this story.
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