I watched most of that fencing match live. It was pretty chaotic and not very clear, but in the end I think this is how it worked out;
There was a double touch just as the clock hit 1 second, stopping the clock with 0.01 showing.
There was a second double touch immediately after the restart, with 0.01 still showing.
There was a
third double touch, still with 0.01 showing. Commentators speculated the clock hadn't even had time to be started.
Before the match restarted, the clock went to 0.00 for some reason. A lot of people thought Shin had won (including her and her coach) but were stopped by the ref. At the time no explicit reason was given.
One second was put back on the clock. The timekeeping in fencing was pretty basic, so this was a full second, not the fraction remaining after the first two double touches.
When the match was restarted the German scored, although not as quickly as the first two double touches, taking a goodly amount of the final second to win.
This was when the SK coach started appealing. The ref rewarded the match despite the appeals. They had to file a (hand) written appeal on site, without leaving the arena. This was very involved and no-one knew what was going on. No-one was communicating with Shin during this while she was left in front of the crowd, utterly distraught.
Eventually one of the officials came on and told her (not overly sensitively) the appeal was rejected and tried to remove her. She refused to go and seemed to be looking for her coach for an explanation. It doesn't seem that she had had any other communication with anyone at this point, so didn't really know what was going on.
The official and another man (a senior member of the federation) came back. The first official seemed to threaten her with a yellow card, with the black disqualification card also being openly carried. The second man was more gentle and coaxed her out of the arena, back to her coach.
As for the details of the appeal, the explanation I heard from the commentators later was that after the third double touch (second in the final second) she had committed a technical infringement of some sort. The referee couldn't award the match on a foul, even if time had apparently expired, so added the second back onto the clock. I'm guessing that the image is an assessment of the alleged infringement, although I don't really see what it's about. It's hard to say if she did violate some rule or other, given no-one has stated what rule she broke and I don't exactly know the rules myself.
On the other hand, her opponent has said that the clock is always set to 1 second remaining after a hit in the final second and that she has fallen victim to this in the past. Thing is absolutely no-one else mentioned this rule and it wasn't the justification given.
The Japanese silver appeal, that seems fairly valid to me. The dismount was given as not a dismount at all, a penalty costing 0.5 points (as well as any points not scored during the dismount). Technically a dismount only requires you land on your feet. The Japanese gymnast slipped but did land on his feet even if he did so inelegantly. I believe they had a total of 0.7 or so added, so that's going from absolutely no dismount to an abysmal one. Even if he had been awarded no additional points, only getting rid of that 0.5 penalty would have put them back into second, and that penalty was certainly not valid.
And on the tiny weightlifters,
the Beeb has a nice plot of athlete weights and heights. The bottom left is a mostly female gymnasts, a diver, then suddenly a weightlifter
who took silver.
Ye Shiwen cleared over doping allegations.
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Topic: The 2012 London Olympics thread! (PLEASE READ RULES) (Read 32566 times)