Row over judging mars gymnastics

By Ivy Susanti

JAKARTA (JP): Allegations of biased judging marred the women's gymnastic team competition yesterday, as the Philippines and Malaysia grudgingly shared the top honors.

The Philippines had been declared the winner after the four mandatory exercises, but a bitterly disappointed Malaysian team charged a Philippine gymnast's score had been unfairly upped by the technical delegates on the international panel of judges.

After a review, both teams received identical scores of 132.753.

Indonesian gymnastics team manager, Andi Darussalam Tabusala, joined the protest by stating the Philippine gymnast -- who he identified as 13-year-old Pia Adele Reyes -- had her score unfairly raised by 0.4 during the competition.

"The Philippine coach went to the technical delegate to check out whether there might be errors in the judging," he said. "Then she went to the judges table, and the score of the gymnast was upgraded."

Andi said he did not know the reason for the change in the score. Reyes won silver medals in the balance beam and floor at the 18th SEA Games.

The honorary secretary-general of South East Asian Gymnastics Confederation, N, Shanmugarajah, confirmed there had been a problem in the scoring.

"A gymnast was getting a higher value than she should have, so the judges had to review her performance in the competition," he said.

According to the head of the gymnastic competition, Agus Mahendra, the panel of judges and the technical delegates had reviewed the gymnast's performance through a TV video recording before deciding to reduce her score.

"There was a correction in the result after viewing the Philippine gymnast's performance that affected the final result of the whole team," Agus told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

Indonesia won the bronze with a score of 132.397.

Andi was disappointed with his team's results, but said they could still do well in the individual events.

"We hope Afrina will win medals in the floor exercises and uneven bars," he said.

Afrina said she felt cheated by the erratic judging.

"I am deeply disappointed over the result given by the judges. For the beam, I only got 8.184," she said, adding that this was lower than her usual scores in practice.

Looking ahead to the individual events, Afrina said she expected medals in the balance beam, uneven bars and floor.