cheating chinese bastards just because it is held in their country (GOOKLAND)  the bitch is probably only 10, revoke her medal and give it to the one who deserves it  alicia from U S A. i loved BELLA'S SPEECH tHIS A INSULT TO THE AMERICANS.

She did not fall!! she performed a beutiful stunt and was CHEATED!

alicia Landed 2 vaults.... on the floor exercise the announcers said that if u fall unless everyone else falls u are out of the medals i assumed that the same principal applied to the vault why was there exception for the chinese i smell something fishy also the italin girl did a worse offense and only stepped out of the boundaries and got a 12.43  she got minus about 2 from every judge but CHing fei completely fell this is an out rage how can u win if u fall and 4th place sacramone who landed 1 perfectly and took a small step which is not even a deduction lose!!!! CHING fuckin got a higher score after her fall then sacramone did when she stuck it gymnastics needs to finally get unbiased judges god damn

alicia Landed 2 vaults.... on the floor exercise the announcers said that if u fall unless everyone else falls u are out of the medals i assumed that the same principal applied to the vault why was there exception for the chinese i smell something fishy also the italin girl did a worse offense and only stepped out of the boundaries and got a 12.43  she got minus about 2 from every judge but CHing fei completely fell this is an out rage how can u win if u fall and 4th place sacramone who landed 1 perfectly and took a small step which is not even a deduction lose!!!! CHING fuckin got a higher score after her fall then sacramone did when she stuck it gymnastics needs to finally get unbiased judges god damn

To Jeanette Richardson -- I don't think it's fair to call the Chinese "cheating chinese bastards" or to call Cheng Fei a bitch. You're really coming off as a racist, immature blind patriot, or at least to me. This is a problem with the judges, not the host country or the athletes themselves. What can an athlete do--besides take performance enhancing drugs--to make judges give them higher scores? And, to my knowledge, none of the judges are Chinese or represent China in any way.

The only way I can think of for a host country to influence judging is to bribe the judges. This, of course, would open a Pandora's box for them. This would mean all the judges accepted the bribes or there would be inconsistencies in the scoring. What does this say? If all of them gave in their integrity, if none of them surfaced about being bribed, what does this say? It means all the individual countries had rotten choices of judges and that the IOC did a poor job of ensuring the integrity of the games.

I know people are angry and disappointed but loud words aren't going to solve the problem. A protest or petition could work nicely though. I'd like to know how these judges marked them, but I'm just going to give them the benefit of the doubt; and if a problem really exists, I trust the American team will bring up the appopriate questions to the IOC. Hats off to Alicia for keeping her cool.

I'm really not sure how this happened either.  Very strange to me how someone who just flat out fell won a medal.  Also, the gold medal winner stepped out of bounds twice.  Alicia had 2 very solid vaults, and was pushed out of medal contention.  I understand that there is difficulty value involved, but again that raises more questions.  The judges have shown that apparently execution is not as important (falling, stepping out of bounds still gets you medals).  So why not spend 4 years learning the most difficult flips and twists in the gymnastics world?  Perfect those crazy acrobatics in the air!  Don't worry about landing, that's not as important as how hard the vault is.  Just flip your little heart out, land on your knees, back, head, whatever, as long as it looks cool.  Should be guaranteed a medal, if the current trend of judging stays.

Tim Daggert reiterated the various mistakes that the Chinese gymnast performed on the vault.  There were several, not just the final landing on her knee, as well as where one of her hands was placed on the vault and the separated leg on the air (form break).  Therefore, even if her start value was high, with all the mistakes she made, she should have still scored lower than Alicia Sacramone.  Bella Karolyi may be too emotional about the sport but you have to remember that he is very experienced in gymnastics producing winners as Nadia Commaneci, Kerri Strug and Mary Lou Retton. This is why he is very observant of every score, every fall, every mistake, every good form and every good landing.  As far as filing a protest, I too wonder about that.  I certainly hope that they file one because this is what the Olympics are about.  The Chinese already cheated by saying two of their gymnasts are 16.  If they have enough respect for hosting the Olympics they should at least admit to this one being misjudge and give the bronze medal to the one that truly deserved it.

I'm sure the level of difficulty plays a large role in the judging and scoring so you can't just say 'oh, but they made a mistake, their mark should be lower!' The more difficult the vault, the higher the mark will be. So contrasting the difficulties and performance, it is possible for someone with poorer performance to score better than someone with a better performance and lower difficulty. Think about it.