Refereeing in some sports is quite subjective. Who will be awarded the highest score, and whose deficiency is found, depends on the group of judges. And sometimes they can change their decisions, awarding victory to previously lost participants and taking medals from already announced winners.
A similar situation happened at the London Olympic Games with a group of Ukrainian athletes who participated in the team competition in artistic gymnastics. The team of athletes, which included Nikolai Kuksenkov, Igor Radivilov, Oleg Vernyaev, Vitaly Nakonechny and Oleg Stepko, received a bronze medal, leaving behind the Japanese group, which committed gross violations in their performance.
However, this result did not satisfy the Japanese. They filed an appeal against the evaluation of their athlete's performance. As a result, the arbitration court granted Japan's petition after revising the controversial performance and set a new ball, and the team of the Land of the Rising Sun took second place, displacing the athletes from the UK. The British, respectively, took third place, and the Ukrainian team was ousted from the number of prize-winners. The gold medals in the tournament remained with a group of athletes from China.
According to the head coach of the men's national team of Ukraine, the judges simply stole the medal from his country. According to him, even the British, who previously took second place, made a number of small mistakes in their speech, which the judges ignored. The vice-president of the Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation supports his colleague. He believes that the Japanese athlete nevertheless committed a gross violation - he flunked the dismount, and it was extremely unfair to give him a high mark. In turn, the Ukrainian athletes performed their program cleanly, despite the fact that Nikolai Kuksenkov competed after a serious leg injury.
Unfortunately, the Ukrainian side cannot influence the decision of the judges in any way. According to the rules of the Olympic Games, you can only appeal the assessment of your team. In this situation, Ukrainian athletes were powerless.
