A Question About Your Sports Ethics?

Question

I'm just curious about how YOU would feel in this situation:

Remember when Paul Hamm won the individual all-around in Athens, but after reviewing the scores, it was discovered that the South Korean actually won it (the judges made a scoring error).

Would you still feel like a gold medalist if you realized that someone else actually beat you, and that your victory was the result of a careless error? Would you admit that the other person did better?

(Although I am using Paul Hamm as an example, I am NOT asking you how he should have responded. I am asking you how YOU would feel.)

Answer 1

i would acknoledge it be if it were true i would keep going like some one said your have to get over phelps winning you can clearly see that phelps touch first in the various replays they showed that night during the olympics if you watched it

Answer 2

I think this is one of those questions that have too strong of gray areas and end up being too hard to answer, with no right one.

Answer 3

How about all the errors that never were discovered, or the cheaters like the Russian and Bulgarian drug users who stole medals all through the cold war. No, they handed him the gold so in my eyes he won it and deserved it.

Answer 4

I'd feel bad. But understand that officiating errors are part of sport. If in a soccer match, a referee wrongly awards your team a penalty, you still have to be competitive and try to score. That's just the way it is.

If I were Paul Hamm, I would not give the medal back. It was the fault of the judges, not his. These incompetent officials cannot be allowed to get off the hook. They must take the blame when things like this happen, not the athlete.

On another note, it is true that the Korean gymnast was scored with a lower starting value. But it is also true that there were deductions in his routine that the judges missed. He made one more release on the apparatus than was allowed, and the judges failed to pick up on it. That mistake which was in his favor was better for him than the mistake that went against him. Watch the video again if you don't believe me.

Answer 5

I would feel really bad, knowing that i took the medal away from someone who actually deserved it. I would have apologized greatly to the other competitor. And after a few months, in which i probably would be eating my heart out cause i felt bad and guilty, it might get to the point where i would give them my medal, but that would have to be extreme like they announced that the other person won, then they said i won, than a few days later they figure out that they actually won. It would have to be bad like that in order for me to give it up. But i would feel really bad. Then again, that's never happened to me, and in the situation i could totally be greedy and be like "the medal is mine!!!".  Yeah, that might happen lol. But i would deff. feel bad, possibly give them the medal.

Answer 6

adf

Answer 7

These kind of things don't happen frequently, but I'd step down a podium and accept my true medal.

Answer 8

Phelps beat Cavic, get over it.

Answer 9

I would not feel like a gold medalist if there was a mistake and I really should have received silver. I don't know who would feel like a gold medalist if that were the case. You didn't really win. It was an accident.

Good question!