The clock never started! So Heidemann had more than one second to land the winning touch. At the very least, whether she landed it in time was highly in doubt. The match should have continued into another round, but instead Shin was declared the loser. So South Korea’s coach went to the judges.
Despite the clock issue, they ruled that the touch was good and that Heidemann was the victor. South Korea’s coach went off to file a formal appeal.
And Shin A Lam, now in tears, refused to live the piste (the platform that they fence on). In fencing, leaving the piste means that you have officially accepted the judges’ ruling. And seeing as the clock didn’t start, and she should still have a shot at gold, she sat down. It’s the filibuster of fencing.
For 45 minutes, Shin refused to live the piste.
I seriously still feel so fucking bad for her. Fucking ridiculous and -2/10 for those judges. Goddamn.
I seriously hope something terrible comes out of this, this is not representative of the Olympics. The judges should be punished and an investigation needs to be launched.
If you’ve read up on it, the gist of it was that the German was given an extra second after the clock stopped, due to a penalty against the Korean. They didn’t say what the penalty was. The referee announced the resumption of the match. The judges didn’t start the clock. The German got a match winning hit in. Without a running game clock. In what was obviously much more than a second. The judges didn’t acknowledge anything sketchy about this.
What’s worse is that in order to appeal, the Korean team needed to pay money. That’s right, Olympic judges openly announced that they were basically taking bribes for a fucking appeal on an obviously bad judgementwhile an Olympian sat on the fencing strip in hysterics for the entire world to see. The judges even had the nerve to tell her to leave after 30 minutes of deliberation, when they were the ones who told her that she’d be accepting defeat if she left the strip.
Guys, it doesn’t take a genius to see that something’s fishy here, especially when you consider that the German was the defending gold medalist.
(via sweetestar)
