Hamm should share the gold

ATHENS, Greece - Paul Hamm might deserve a Wheaties box, a million-dollar endorsement deal, and all the spoils that go to any Beaver Cleaver, boy-next-door champ whose eyes spill over when "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played.

But he doesn't deserve sole ownership of the all-around gymnastics medal. That is something he most definitely needs to share.

If gymnastics officials and the Court of Arbitration for Sport have any sense of justice, they will immediately award a second gold medal to Yang Tae-young of South Korea, who was stuck with the bronze Wednesday because of garden variety Olympic incompetence from the mystery men in blazers and ties.

The judges messed up. What else is new? Yang should've been given a start value of 10 on his parallel bars routine, and instead was given a 9.9. That tenth of a point wasn't some irrelevant fraction to be dismissed on an otherwise historic gymnastics night.

It was only the difference between hearing the South Korean anthem and the American anthem.

The official box score said Hamm beat Kim Dae-eun and countryman Yang in the closest all-around competition the Olympics have ever seen. As it turns out, that box score is a fraud. The International Gymnastics Federation ruled that three judges - from Spain, Colombia and the United States - needed to be suspended because of this fraud, but that the final results were the final results.

What a joke.

Fairness and common sense should always supersede some bureaucrat's blowhard rules, rules that have a way of bending with the public opinion gale, anyway. In Salt Lake City, with the North American media machine at full throttle, a cute-as-cupcakes Canadian couple was awarded a share of the figure skating gold won by the Russian pair. This decision was made by the International Olympic Committee on the recommendation of the International Skating Union, and enforced before an investigation of judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne's conduct was complete.

There's been no public hint of corruption here. Just more Inspector Clouseau bunk from Olympic judges, who have already made a mockery of Aaron Peirsol's 200-meter backstroke victory and a team equestrian event originally won by Germany before it was handed back to the French with American and English help - just like Paris was in 1944.

But if the CAS fails to right this wrong, the IOC needs to step in for the South Korean like it stepped in for Jamie Sale and David Pelletier in Salt Lake, and like it stepped in for Canada's Sylvie Frechette in 1993, one year after she was denied the gold in synchronized swimming because a judge mistyped an 8.7 score into her computer when she meant to give Frechette a 9.7.

American Kristen Babb-Sprague was allowed to keep her gold then, just as Paul Hamm would be allowed to keep his gold now. Only gymnastics officials are saying their rules don't allow for a protest of the judges' scoring. "The judges' marks have to be accepted as a final decision and cannot be changed,'' decreed a news release from the sport's governing body.

Put this in the books: Yang will get a ceremony to call his own. With a procession of cheating athletes doping out of these games, and with so many headlines shouting about so few Olympic fans in the stands, the IOC doesn't need another migraine. Jacques Rogge is saying the IOC doesn't get involved in pure ranking issues, but give Rogge and the boys two or three days to get their stories straight. Sooner rather than later, they'll make flip-flopping the games' latest demonstration sport.

That's assuming a Salt Lake-sized outcry meets this train wreck head on. Will the Americans lead the charge this time? Will they scream and shout and flail about like they did when Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze were ice dancing alone on the highest Winter Games mount?

Or will they remain perfectly content with their apple-pie-faced Yank as exclusive owner of a medal he shouldn't have won?

Even if the South Koreans were late with their protest (they say they weren't), who cares? There's no shot clock on justice. If the foul-ups here weren't as dreadful as they were in the Soviet-U.S. basketball game in Munich, or in that Roy Jones fight in Seoul, they were close enough.

Sorry, but suspending a few faceless judges doesn't close the deal. Paul Hamm has to share the gold medal. He doesn't have to share the Wheaties box.