That's "Miss Liukin" -- If You're Nasti

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/gymnastics/news/story?id=3536224

I can honestly say that it is a miracle that the U.S. finished 1-2 given how badly jobbed they were in the scoring. So, the result is correct -- but how the judges got to the final scores is, quite frankly, anyone's guess.

A sign that perhaps gymnastics has lost its way with its new scoring system: Liukin perfoms an excellent vault: 15.025 total. Chinese girls, literally, falls on her ass: 14.825.

This is akin to someone in a dunk contest doing a nice reverse dunk perfectly and getting all 6s while another person gets a 5.75 while attempting a 360 and missing the rim entirely. I mean, come on. You don't actually get either foot firmly on the ground, you didn't complete the vault -- that should be a major, major deduction and you should have no chance of a top 10 finish.

And another thing -- if we are seeking an "all around" champion, shouldn't we arrange the contests so that the best gymnasts do the same degree of difficulty on each appartatus? You have girls scoring almost 17 on uneven bars and only 2 clearing 15 on floor exercise.

This is like having a competition to find the world's greatest "all around" athlete in hockey, basketball, baseball and football where the best football player can score 17 at football and the best hockey, baseball and basketball players can only score 15 at their events. Isn't this a pretty obvious problem? Hockey guy has a great day at all events and he goes 15/15/14/14 while the football guy goes 17/15/14/13 and wins.

What you are actually finding is the person who is the best at gymnastics.........considering the fact that you can get like 2 points more at uneven bars if you are good at them.....

I also get a kick out of the fact that the international judges don't care much for chunky American Shawn Johnson on the balance beam and prefer the longer more graceful performers. So, even if you are a GOOD chunky American, we really don't want to encourage that....