Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics

A total of 252 gymnasts from 45 nations competed at the Athens Games.

The gymnastics competition had scoring controversies, most prominently with the South Korean competitor Yang Tae-young.

The Korean team contested Tae-Young's parallel bars score after judges misidentified one of the elements of his routine. The effect of this misidentification was that the start value was recorded as 9.9 rather than 10. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) dismissed the Korean Olympic Committee's appeal on the grounds that the appeal, coming after the end of competition, was made too late, and insufficient evidence of corruption or bad faith on the part of the judges was presented to overturn a strong preference for a "field of play" judgment rather than one made after the fact.[2][3]

Further problems occurred in the men's horizontal bar competition. After performing a routine with six release skills in the high bar event final (including four in a row – three variations of Tkatchev releases and a Gienger), the judges posted a score of 9.725, placing Nemov in third position with several athletes still to compete. This was actually a fair judging decision because he took a big step on landing which was a two tenths deduction. The crowd became unruly on seeing the results and interrupted the competition for almost fifteen minutes. Influenced by the crowd's fierce reaction, the judges reevaluated the routine and increased Nemov's score to 9.762, but this did not improve his placement and he finished without a medal.

The controversies led to the reconstruction of the scoring system which was implemented in 2006. The rule changes are credited as having encouraged more acrobatic activity and increasing difficulties on the high bar apparatus seen in later competitions.[4]

• Gymnastics at the 2002 Asian Games
• Gymnastics at the 2002 Commonwealth Games
• Gymnastics at the 2003 African Games
• Gymnastics at the 2003 Pan American Games
• 2003 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships

• Official result book – Gymnastics Artistic
• Official result book – Gymnastics Rhythmic
• Official result book – Gymnastics Trampoline
• www.gymnasticsresults.com
• www.gymn-forum.net