RUSSIA, CANADA, SOUTH KOREA DISSATISFIED WITH JUDGING IN GYMNASTICS

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MOSCOW, August 28 (RIA Novosti) - President Jacques Rogge of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will personally address the issue of biased judging at the gymnastics competition, President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Leonid Tyagachev said during Saturday's Moscow-Athens TV Bridge program.

The ROC head said that he had sent a special letter to IOC President Jacques Rogge immediately after the incident involving Russian gymnast Alexei Nemov when the judges awarded undeservedly low marks for his horizontal bar routine.

"He (Rogge) agreed with me and will be addressing the issue of biased judging at the next meeting of the IOC Executive Committee," Mr. Tyagachev said. "Nemov is an outstanding gymnast and he was able to win Olympic medals."

It was earlier reported that the Russian Olympic delegation in Athens had filed official complaints for biased judging with the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) and the IOC President's Office.

It was the unfair judging of Russian gymnasts' performance (Svetlana Khorkina in the all-round tournament and Alexei Nemov in the individual horizontal bar title event) that caused such a response from the Russian delegation. In both cases gold medals were awarded to U.S. gymnasts.

The Russian gymnastics team is not the only one dissatisfied with the standard of judging at the Olympics. Representatives of the Canadian Gymnastics Federation raised the same problem on Monday after judges had awarded the bronze medal in the individual jump event to the Romanian gymnast Marian Dragulescu who, in their opinion, outperformed Canadian Cayle Shewfelt. The Canadians officials believe that their compatriot's performance was worthy of the bronze medal but the judges turned a blind eye to Dragulescu's faulty landing after the jump and arbitrarily placed him third in the final rankings.

Another scandal took place when, following a protest filed by the South Korean Gymnastics Federation, FIG officials had to acknowledge that the judges had made a mistake when evaluating a Korean gymnast's routine. The mistake cost the South Korean athlete a gold medal in the all-round individual title tournament. The gold in this case was also awarded to a U.S. gymnast.

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