Olympic Gymnastics - obvious bias with judges - are they being bribed or otherwise pressured to favor Chinese?

Question

Just one example: Chinese gymnast falls on vault, yet gets a score of 15.5 (rules stipulate it should have been about 14.5 at the very most - difficulty level notwithstanding). American vaulter lands almost perfectly and is given a score just slightly lower than the 15.5 score given to the Chinese gymnast.

NBC commentators and, in particular, Bela Karolyi, were continually expressing consternation over the judging which was clearly and improperly tilted to show favor to the Chinese and to work against the Americans.

Please add your thoughts.

Answer 1

Ppl who dun understand the gymnastics scoring system should stop posting stupid questions like these.

Answer 2

America is not as good as china at Gymnastics full stop  

Answer 3

Poor America.

Answer 4

Whining can be pretty amusing too.

Especially NBC commentators.  WAH WAH WAH...hahaha

Answer 5

study the scoring system before posting.

Answer 6

in things like gymnastics and figure skating  they all get together and pick who ever they like best anyways

they don't care who does good you only score high if they like you,you score low if they dont

what i'm saying is the chinese girl could have just climbed over that vault and got the same score as the american girl even if the american did it perfect

Answer 7

I don't think the judges are being pressured in any way.  If they are, they would seriously be questioned by the IOC like the French judge did in Salt Lake City.  If they are actually making mistakes, which I personally don't think they are, they are simply making flawed judgments, regardless of whoever wins the medals.

And Bela is a controversial figure and a biased idiot.  There's a reason he's banned from Beijing.  He's the last guy I would listen to.

Answer 8

It's all about the favorites.  

Answer 9

They are using a new scoring system so give it some time.

Answer 10

1) A new scoring system is being used for the first time in Beijing.  It is introduced to promote fairness after what happened at the 2004 Athens Olympics -- Paul Hamm of the United States won the individual all-around gold after judges awarded an unfair low score to his South Korean opponent.

2) Competitors receive two scores from separate judging panels -- one an open-ended mark measuring the difficulty of the routine (A-score), the other a mark out of 10 for how well it was executed (B-score).

3) The panels are composed of judges from different countries, and they rotate for each event.  

4) Even though American Alicia Sacramone landed both vaults when Chinese gymnast fell to her knees on one of the vaults, the result was not obviously unfair. Both of her vaults were much harder than Sacramone's, making her A-score higher. The A and B scores are added together, and the scores for the two vaults are averaged. She got a large B-score deduction for the fall, but performed very well on her first vault – significantly better even than the winner. She bested Sacramone by a very small margin, but the reason does not appear to be judging bias.