Sunday, September 14, 2008

Knocked Down to Silver Medal
Nastia Liukin, the all-around American gymnast, had even finals on the uneven bars. She performed a flawless routine and had only one noticeable mistake during her routine. On the other hand, her competitor, He Kexim, won the bronze all-around gymnastics medal. She was up on bars competing against Nastia. He performed her routine and there were some obvious errors throughout that I noticed. When judging came around, He and Nastia received the same score for the uneven bars in event finals. The new rules for the Olympics said that there can be no ties for medals. So the judges had to pick a winner for gold and a winner for silver. The judges approved He for the gold medal and silver for Nastia. This seemed like an unfair judgement.
I know a lot about gymnastics and love the sport. When I was watching these olympic event finals, I thought that Nastia performed a better and cleaner routine compared to He Kexim. Nastia performed a beautiful routine and stuck her landing, which means that she did not stumble at all. She had a great routine and the only mistake that i saw was her legs splitting. When I watched He's routine, she had a lot more obvious errors such as not having her toes pointed the whole time and separating her legs several times. Also, on He's dismount, she stumbled a bit and still awarded the same score as Nastia.
I think that the judges made a mistake of giving the gold to He because Nastia obviously had a better routine. Since the Chinese were in their home country, many people think that He won the gold because of favor and not skill. I agree with this. Since the Chinese were in their home country, i think that there was a little favor towards her so that she could show her home country that she won a gold medal. This was very unfair to Nastia and i think that she should have won the uneven bars event finals.

Do you think that Nastia deserved the silver?

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