Comaneci speaks out

"The judges need to re-evaluate and make sure something like this doesn't happen again," Comaneci said.

"The gymnast shouldn't be paying the price for things like this."

"People power" brought gymnastics judges to their knees on Monday during the horizontal bar final at the end of more than a week of Olympic action in which scoring irregularities left several gymnasts disgruntled.

The governing body of gymnastics ruled last week Paul Hamm had been awarded the all-round crown in error after South Korea's Yang Tae-young had been incorrectly docked a 10th of a point from his parallel bars routine.

Although the (FIG) admitted its mistake, the federation has refused to redistribute the medals, saying there was nothing in its rules to overturn the judges' decision.

The South Koreans are appealing the decision to the sport's supreme ruling body.

"Unfortunately when people will talk about the gymnastics competition in Athens, it will be about the Paul Hamm fiasco and it's not even his fault," said Comaneci, who created Olympic history when she became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the 1976 Montreal Games.

"We all hope that the right gymnast wins and something like this makes everyone unhappy.

"Paul should keep his medal as it's not his fault. The FIG has to look at the situation and hopefully clean it all up."

Chaos erupted at the closing event of the gymnastics programme on Monday when fans forced the judges to change the score of four-times Olympics champion Alexei Nemov's horizontal bar display.

After awarding just 9.725 for a spectacular routine, the judges had to revise the score as the crowd refused to let the contest continue for almost 10 minutes.

While the modified score of 9.762 failed to lift the Russian into the medals, the incident brought to the fore the injustice many gymnasts have felt during the competition in Athens.

The Russians are also contemplating an appeal as they feel Nemov and Svetlana Khorkina -- who won a silver in the women's all-round event behind American Carly Patterson -- have become victims of biased judging.

"Everyone has to be more cautious as a little incompetence from the judges is affecting peoples lives in a big way," said Comaneci, herself an ex-judge.

"Hopefully they will learn a lesson from this."