The Prime Minister of Romania, Marcel Ciolacu, stated that he decided to skip the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics as a protest due to what happened in the women’s floor final of the gymnastics competition. The Romanian Prime Minister also announced that the victims of the case, Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Voinea, will receive the monetary reward due to the bronze medalist.
I decided not to visit the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics after the gymnastics scandal in which our athletes were treated dishonestly. To take away a well-earned medal after a warning… is unimaginable.
The story is somewhat more nuanced than that. In the final, American Jordan Chiles, Romanian Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Voinea finished within 0.066 points (for the gold medal there was an even smaller difference of 0.033). In such cases, it is customary – all delegations use it, now the Romanians and the Americans have done it too – for the delegations to protect the D, i.e. difficulty score of the exercise (the E, export score cannot be protected).
At that time, the superior jury, made up of experts from the technical committee, must review the video and evaluate the exercise, and then decide whether to approve the warning. What the Prime Minister vomits (warning and then changing the result after videoing) is completely normal in gymnastics. Countless competitions have ended without having to wait for the verdict of the superior jury.
Regardless, the Romanians are probably right about another problem. Voinea received a so-called neutral deduction (one tenth) for stepping out of the valid area with one foot. The video footage contradicts this. It is possible that the system assisted by the cameras signaled incorrectly (and the linesman is no longer sitting in the corner precisely because of the camera system). If that’s the case, Voinea was indeed unfairly deducted a tenth and he should be the bronze medalist.
A news has spread that the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) will re-evaluate the practice and if it is proven that the line monitoring system worked poorly, it will turn to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport together with the Romanians and try to get Voinea a bronze medal in addition to Chiles. This has not yet been officially confirmed by the FIG.
