I'm no expert, but the Russian got ROBBED! And that crowd knew it. Okay so he bobbled his landing but SIX RELEASES?! HOW are you going to score that a 9.6??

Even when his score was finally changed it still didnt do justice.

Thank god Paul Hamm got the silver, or else he would have had his ass in the fire again to explain another gold medal.

Gymnastics is another sport that needs to completely rethink the way they score. It is way too subjective.

The way (amateur) boxing solved the problem is the right one, the judges score each valid hit with an electronic device and if 2 out of the 3 judges score within like a quarter second for the same guy, it counts as a point. This takes most of the subjective crap out of the sport and measures an objective aspect, a hit instead.

Gymnastics needs something like this, there have been enough questionable scores just during this olympics that even spectators will get disappointed.

I'm no gymnastics fan, but that was something to watch. I have NEVER seen/heard a crowd react in such a way. Their basically force the judges to reconsider their scoring (yet still get it wrong) has got to be a pretty rare occurrence.

I wasn't sure who I felt worse for: the Russian who got jobbed by the judges, or Paul Hamm, who had to follow him while dealing with a noisy crowd after standing around for 10 minutes waiting.

It is way too subjective.
Isn't it actually pretty objective? the judges are given a rundown of the routine and if the gymnast deviates from the routine they lose points. everything is assigned a specific point value so the judges are limited by how far down they can mark somebody for a little screw up. Of course, many of those guys don't screw up so a little step on landing is a big deal. I think landing is worth a whole half point if I remember correctly so if you fall completely you lose it all. Taking a step is less of a reduction but still big deal.

That russian dude did get robbed though. Who knows though, maybe it just looked fancy to our unknowing eyes? maybe those 6 release moves weren't even hard but he just threw in a lot of them? I have no clue.

I could not believe that the Nemov did not even place for a medal. All respect to Paul Hamm, a great gymnast, but I did not think that his routine was impressive AT ALL in light of Nemov's routine and several others I saw. Believe you me, 6 releases, 4 of them all in a row is a big deal. That is not easy! In my mind the Nemov was the winner last night because I thought he was the classiest athlete I have ever seen and very humble. It was an incredible gesture for him to get up and ask the crowd to please quiet so that his competitor could start his routine. At least we know now that all Russian Gymnast's are not like Khorkina, the female competitor who has a major attitude problem...and seemingly hates Americans.

they also said Nemov had 12 olympic medals so far in his lifetime....he didn't have anything to prove. He was humble though and I also agree that that counts for a lot. That one arm swingin stuff that the top few guys were doing was crazy though. imagine the force being exerted on that one arm and having to keep yourself from twisting. I honestly think that is probably more difficult than release moves.

there really is no way to make the judging much more fair, except maybe to have 50 more judges so the averages can't be thrown off by malaysia and canada. It's just an intrinsic property of some sports that they must be judged and the decisions have to stay or it upsets the whole system.

Yes, Nemov did get robbed but the biggest victimn in this whole mess is the TV watching public. We were forced to watch the whole mens gymnastics soap opera while NBC had very little prime time coverage of the DECATHALON. I'm mean come on, the winner of the decathalon is considered to be the worlds greatest athlete and we are only given headlines and snippets of the event. What a JOKE!

It really makes me think who is in control of the schedule? My theory: The network bascially has the power to declare any athlete an "american hereo" by the amount of coverage they give them. But who decides which ones will be the heros and which ones will not? Myabe it's the advertisers. Maybe the advertisers say, "look NBC, you will give men's gymnastics this much prime time air because we intend to milk this athlete for every penny after the games".

Any thoughts?

A very astute observation. I was wondering the same thing myself last night...we have seen plenty gymnastics, as amazing as they are. I would have much rather caught more of the decathalon.