COMMENTARY

By Jim Litke

updated 2:23 p.m. ET Sept. 14, 2004

ATHENS, Greece - If he winds up giving back the gold medal, maybe Paul Hamm could look into returning Manhattan, Alaska and the Louisiana territory next.

Incompetence may be inconvenient — criminal, even, in a few special cases — but in sports it’s a way of life. If bad calls, like bad business deals, were open to review forever, no game would ever end. There would be no winners and losers, only lawyers. George Steinbrenner would own judges, not ballplayers.

If this latest scandal at the Olympics doesn’t have you worried, it’s only because you haven’t been paying attention. Hamm, on the other hand, hasn’t had time to think about anything else. He’s the only one in this whole mess who didn’t do anything wrong.

Which, of course, made him the perfect fall guy for inept judges, butt-covering officials and an International Olympic Committee afraid of its own shadow.

“It is not my responsibility to deal with it,” Hamm said Tuesday. “My responsibility is to do gymnastics, and it’s up to these governing bodies to deal with these matters. For them to put the pressure on the athletes, I think is wrong.”

And put on the pressure they did.

Gymnastics officials asked Hamm Thursday to give up his gold medal as the ultimate show of sportsmanship, but the U.S. Olympic Committee told them to take responsibility for their own mistakes.

FIG president Bruno Grandi tried to send the letter Thursday night to Hamm through the USOC, but the USOC refused to deliver it.

In a letter back to Grandi, USOC secretary general Jim Scherr called the request “a blatant and inappropriate attempt on the part of (FIG) to once again shift responsibility for its own mistakes and instead pressure Mr. Hamm into resolving what has become an embarrassing situation for your federation.”

FREE VIDEO Hamm stands firm Aug. 24: U.S. gymnast Paul Hamm tells "Today" host Katie Couric why he is keeping the disputed gold medal he won in the men's all-around competition. Today Show Olympics

On Aug. 18, Hamm became the first American man to win gymnastics gold in the all-around. His victory was as narrow as it was spectacular. After a fall on the vault, he dropped from first place after three rotations to 12th after four. After brilliant performances on the parallel bars and high bar, Hamm totaled 57.823 points — 0.012 better than South Korea’s Kim Dae-eun, and 0.049 better than Kim’s countryman, Yang Tae-young.

It was the closest all-around finish in Olympic history.

Not long after, officials of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) suspended three judges and acknowledged Yang should have been awarded more points for his routine based on the degree of difficulty. Had he been given the correct score, Yang would have won the gold and Hamm the silver.

There used to be an all-purpose term in sports to cover such occasions. It was “tough luck.” Losers grumbled, sometimes for decades, but consoled themselves with the idea that the breaks evened out eventually. Now they keep their cell phones handy and their lawyers on speed dial.

Even that didn’t do the Koreans any good, because under FIG rules, they were allowed to protest only until the start of the next rotation on the night of the competition. And the whole matter should have ended there. But ever since the IOC bowed to public pressure and awarded a second gold at the 2002 Winter Games to a Canadian figure skating pair, nobody wants to go home empty-handed anymore.

Maybe that’s why the Koreans enlisted the U.S. Olympic Committee in a quest for what came to be called an “equitable solution,” which, it turns out, is just a euphemism for “where’s mine?”

The USOC said it might support dual gold medals if the matter reached the IOC, the ultimate arbiter in such cases, but drew the line at asking Hamm to hand his gold over to Yang.

Still, that stance was positively heroic compared to how FIG president Bruno Grandi reacted. He said federation rules bar him from even asking the IOC to mint another medal for Yang, then suggested Hamm bail the whole lot of them out. On Thursday he somewhat backed off his initial statements.

Although Grandi’s letter says “the true winner of the all-around competition is Yang Tae-young” the FIG president insisted he’s not pressuring Hamm.

“There is no doubt he has won the medal,” Grandi said. “He deserves the medal and the ranking is clear. ... I respect totally Paul Hamm and all the decisions he makes. If he says give back the medal, I respect it. Don’t give back the medal, I respect the decision. He is not responsible for anything.”

The scary thing is that Grandi’s feel-good solution is picking up steam. Everybody from pundits to voters on Web site polls have been suggesting Hamm turn the medal over, as though the gesture would somehow make him more noble.

Please.

The next thing you know, the Yankees will offer to hand Jeffrey Maier over to the Orioles for stoning in a public square in Baltimore. Never mind that Maier was 12 years old when he leaned over the right-field wall in Yankee Stadium during a 1996 playoff game against the Orioles, deflecting a likely fly out into the stands, prompting umpire Rich Garcia to declare it a game-tying home run.

The Yankees won 5-4 in 11 innings, and went on to win the ALCS and World Series. If that had been an Olympic contest instead, they’d be playing still.

The problem, it’s worth noting again, isn’t Hamm, or his decision to hang onto the gold.

It’s all the sports federations that bring cronies to the games on junkets as judges, and Olympic officials too enamored of the money sports like gymnastics and figure skating kick into the pot to call them on it.

For the time being, apparently, it’s a lot cheaper to smelt an extra medal or two than reform a system that’s been broken for decades.

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