Dates 14 – 29 August 2004 | ||
Venue Olympic Indoor Hall (artistic and trampoline)
Galatsi Olympic Hall (rhythmic) | ||
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, three disciplines of gymnastics were contested: artistic gymnastics (August 14–23), rhythmic gymnastics (August 26–29) and trampoline (August 20–21). The artistic gymnastics and trampoline events were held at the Olympic Indoor Hall and the rhythmic gymnastics events were held at the Galatsi Olympic Hall.
Contents
Format of competition
The competition format was largely the same as at the 2000 Summer Olympics. All participating gymnasts, including those who were not part of a team, participated in a qualification round. The results of this competition determined which teams and individuals participated in the remaining competitions, which included:
Participating nations
A total of 252 gymnasts from 45 nations competed at the Athens Games.
Controversies
The gymnastics competition had scoring controversies, most prominently with the South Korean competitor Yang Tae-young.
Yang finished third in the men's individual all-around competition. However on the parallel bars one of his elements was mistaken for a simpler skill and was given a lower Start Value than had been previously awarded in both the team qualifying and team finals sessions at the Olympics. If it had been valued at a 10.0 during the all-around, and the rest of the meet had proceeded the same way, Yang might have finished in first place. After reviewing the situation, International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) officials acknowledged that the SV for the routine had indeed been incorrectly calculated, and suspended the three judges responsible for the error (Oscar Buitrago Reyes of Colombia, Benjamin Bango of Spain, and the head judge George Beckstead of the United States) but ruled that there was no way to change the results after the meet had concluded.
Further problems occurred in the men's horizontal bar competition when the scores awarded did not seem to match the routines performed. The situation came to a head when spectators in the arena reacted very strongly to a low score given to Russian Alexei Nemov, booing for 15 minutes and prompting the score to be reviewed. The boos subsided only when Nemov returned to the podium and personally appealed for calm so the rest of the competitors could complete their routines. The two judges who had given Nemov the lowest scores subsequently increased their scores without explanation before being ushered out by FIG officials.
The controversies led to the reconstruction of the scoring system which was implemented in 2006. The rule changes are credited as having encouraged more acrobatic activity and increasing difficulties on the high bar apparatus seen in later competitions.