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<blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 55795" data-attributes="member: 307">I am unhappy about this decision. To me, it cheapens the status of the gold medal if you can just hand out another when you messed up the first time. I know it happened before, and I thought it was a bad idea then too. For those unfamiliar with that situation a synchronized swimmer was given another gold medal when a judge said he had entered his score wrong in the electronic scoring system. Even though it would have meant removing a gold medal from an swimmer from the US, I would havefound the decision to make much more sense to have the person the judge intended to win actually win (and not share a &quot;second&quot; gold medal), and the US swimmer get the silver. This decision by the IOC/ISU just drags the event futher into the hole it has dug itself by cheapening the gold medal. Now it is certain that someone has a gold medal who didn't actually deserve one as a result of the way they skated. Sure it isn't the Russian skaters' fault, but why should they keep a gold medal if they didn't deserve one in the first place? Why should Sale and Pelletier get a gold medal if they didn't deserve one based on their skating? One or the other pair doesn't deserve a gold medal, but they will both have one, which makes no sense and degrades the value of a gold medal.I also think this will result in exactly zero changes being made in the way the ISU conducts business. This seems very much like an olive branch being handed out to mollify the masses in the hope that once distracted, people will forget about the corruption problem. My fear is that this will happen yet again in 2006, just like it happened in 1992, 1994, and 1998 just about every previous Winter Olympics, because when you get right down to it, nothing is likely to be done to fix the problem.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Storm Raven, post: 55795, member: 307"] I am unhappy about this decision. To me, it cheapens the status of the gold medal if you can just hand out another when you messed up the first time. I know it happened before, and I thought it was a bad idea then too. For those unfamiliar with that situation a synchronized swimmer was given another gold medal when a judge said he had entered his score wrong in the electronic scoring system. Even though it would have meant removing a gold medal from an swimmer from the US, I would havefound the decision to make much more sense to have the person the judge intended to win actually win (and not share a "second" gold medal), and the US swimmer get the silver. This decision by the IOC/ISU just drags the event futher into the hole it has dug itself by cheapening the gold medal. Now it is certain that someone has a gold medal who didn't actually deserve one as a result of the way they skated. Sure it isn't the Russian skaters' fault, but why should they keep a gold medal if they didn't deserve one in the first place? Why should Sale and Pelletier get a gold medal if they didn't deserve one based on their skating? One or the other pair doesn't deserve a gold medal, but they will both have one, which makes no sense and degrades the value of a gold medal. I also think this will result in exactly zero changes being made in the way the ISU conducts business. This seems very much like an olive branch being handed out to mollify the masses in the hope that once distracted, people will forget about the corruption problem. My fear is that this will happen yet again in 2006, just like it happened in 1992, 1994, and 1998 just about every previous Winter Olympics, because when you get right down to it, nothing is likely to be done to fix the problem. [/QUOTE]

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