Fans furious

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, leaving next competitor Paul Hamm of the United States standing by the bar for the noise to die down.

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.

South Korea's Yang Tae-young was robbed of the men's all-round gold medal last week after it emerged he had been incorrectly docked a 10th of a point from his parallel bars routine.

Gymnastics' governing body (FIG) said Hamm should not have been awarded the all-round gold but the federation has refused to redistribute the medals, saying there was nothing in its rules to overturn the judges' decision.

South Korea have appealed to sport's supreme legal body, the Court of Arbitration in Sport, to give the medal to Yang.

"It shows that our sport is a subjective sport, people are going to have different opinions and that's why the judges make the final decision," said Hamm.

Bulgarian Jordan Jovtchev also felt "robbed" by the Athens judges, who gave the rings gold to Greece's Dimosthenis Tampakos. He supports an appeal lodged by his country against the result.

Rings bronze medallist Yuri Chechi of Italy echoed Jovtchev's complaint, saying the home favourite deserved no medal at all.

"I don't think anyone was cheating. But when you get robbed, it's not good," said Jovtchev, who lost out by just 0.012 of a point to finish with silver.

"The performances were close, but when it's the Olympics, you don't take it away from someone who deserves to win," he told Reuters on Monday.

Events over the last week have revived memories of a judging scandal which hit the Salt Lake City Winter Games two years ago.

On that occasion, duplicate gold medals had to be handed out to Canadian runners-up Jamie Sale and David Pelletier in the pairs figure skating event won by Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze -- after it emerged a French judge had been bribed to favour the East European pair.

Although no impropriety has come to light in the judging of the Athens gymnastics -- with human error being blamed for the Yang debacle -- rarely has a panel of adjudicators had to bow to pressure and change their judgment on such a public stage.

"It's my opinion but I don't think it was fair, I thought I deserved a bronze and think everything was decided in advance," said Nemov, who was attempting to win his 13th Olympic medal.