Hamm on a skewer

Ihave a lot of respect for the American Olympic athletes. They train hard for years, and travel to a half-finished Athens to compete under international scrutiny all while trying to either follow or ignore the presidential campaign mudslinging.\nIf any of you readers are sports fans like me, you've been soaking up the near 24-hour coverage provided by the newly purchased networks of NBC. (NBC, owned by General Electric, merged with Universal Entertainment during the summer.) \nI've been able to see Americans win, lose and go for broke in almost every sport. An American woman won the fencing sabre event, and Paul Hamm won the men's all around gymnastics title, both historic events, and both notable for their own reasons. The lady who won the sabre event, Mariel Zagunis, will be headed to Notre Dame this fall. She and American bronze medalist Sada Jacobson could be the new "it" girls in sports. \nThe only problem with that is in fencing, everyone wears white bodysuits and face cages. Fencing in swimsuits might be a little dangerous, so unless fencing goes the way of the WWF, most of the male audience will pass on this one.\nPaul Hamm, one of a set of two with his twin Morgan, helped the U.S. to its first team medal in men's gymnastics in 20 years, and gave the U.S. its first ever male all around champion, but not without a little controversy. The judges gave a Korean gymnast the wrong start value on his parallel bar routine, and the way the math worked out, he would've won the gold had it been correct.\nHamm will keep his gold, in part because the Koreans didn't file their complaint on time. That's like one of us college students demanding an A on a paper turned in three days late. \nSecond, how can one dispute a judged sport? The judging had been all over the place the entire competition. I think I remember seeing the judges give a girl who fell off her apparatus a 9.5. Adding to that, they reviewed the video of the Korean gymnast and actually found that they missed a deduction the first time around.\nWow, not only unjustly complaining, but complaining late. Sounds like a sore loser to me.\nThe Koreans should take a lesson from a couple of hurdlers, Allen Johnson from the U.S. and Perdita Felicien from Canada. These two suffered one of the most embarrassing things that can ever happen to an athlete -- they fell flat on their faces during their races. \nFelicien was running in the final and didn't even make it over the first hurdle, slamming into it with her foot, stumbling, and shouldertackling the second hurdle, taking out the Russian next to her.\nJohnson, obviously injured from an earlier hurdle hit, fell face first into a hurdle and in slow-motion, his face hit the track, his sunglasses popped off, and his dreams were over. Still, these two unfortunate souls didn't try to blame anyone else for their missteps. No replays, no written complaints and no whining. They sucked it up and moved on. Johnson already has a gold from '96. Felicien was only 22, so she has plenty of comeback time. \nThe Koreans should take a page from Johnson's and Felicien's sportsmanship manuals. Quit your bitching and practice harder for next time.