## Facts

- Yang Tae-Young, a South Korean gymnast, competed in the men’s all-around final at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
- In artistic gymnastics scoring, the final score combines a “start value” (degree of difficulty) and an execution score.
- During the parallel bars event, judges assigned Yang a start value of 9.9 rather than 10.0 due to an error in difficulty evaluation.
- The international federation (FIG) later acknowledged the start value should have been 10.0 and suspended three technical officials involved.
- The 0.1 undervaluation left Yang 0.049 points behind Paul Hamm, who received the gold medal; Yang received bronze.
- FIG refused to alter the official results, citing rules that did not allow protests against judges’ marks.
- Yang and the Korean Olympic Committee filed a post-competition appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), seeking correction of the score and revision of the medal standings.

## Issues

1. Whether CAS may review and overturn a post-competition challenge that effectively seeks revision of a field-of-play scoring determination.
2. Whether, under the applicable sport rules and the CAS framework, an admitted judging error permits CAS to order changes to official results or Olympic medal allocation absent fraud, corruption, or similarly egregious irregularity.

## Decision

- CAS dismissed the appeal.
- CAS accepted that a judging error occurred but held it could not re-score the event or order revision of the competition results.
- CAS left the Athens 2004 men’s all-around results unchanged; Hamm retained gold and Yang remained the bronze medalist.

## Legal Principles

- Field-of-play decisions (including judging and scoring determinations made during competition) are generally not subject to post-event arbitral review.
- CAS intervention in scoring disputes is exceptional and typically requires proof of fraud, corruption, intentional manipulation, or misconduct so extreme as to undermine procedural fairness.
- Where the governing rules provide that judges’ marks are final and exclude protests against such marks, participants are bound by that finality and by the limited, time-sensitive in-competition remedies specified by the rules.
- A sport federation’s authority to discipline officials for error does not imply authority or obligation to reopen completed results or reallocate medals.

## Conclusion

CAS denied result-changing relief for an acknowledged scoring mistake because the dispute fell within the protected sphere of final field-of-play judgments under the applicable rules, and there was no showing of fraud, corruption, or comparable misconduct warranting post-competition intervention.


Yang Tae-Young & Korean Olympic Comm. v. Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique, CAS 2004/A/704 (Ct. Arb. Sport Oct. 21, 2004)