Paul Hamm’s Olympic gold medal for the all-around gymnastics championship he won last month officially rests with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The court heard the appeal of South Korean bronze medalist Yang Tae Young as well as testimony from Hamm of Waukesha, Wis., and witnesses Monday. Arbitrators hope to make a ruling in the next two weeks on Yang’s request for a change in the competition’s final results because of a judging error on parallel bars, said CAS General Secretary Matthieu Reeb.
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If the court rules in Yang’s favor, he will be declared the all-around champion and Hamm the silver medalist.
“If they determine by the rules of gymnastics that I should give back my medal, I will,” Hamm said afterward in a telephone news conference.
Hamm’s lawyers argued that decisions made by the competition judges while on the field of play were not subject to review by the court, that the Koreans’ protest of the score came too late to alter the results and changing the results according to a single part of the event “would result in pure speculation about how the event would have come out had the scoring been different,” U.S. Olympic Committee general counsel Jeff Benz said.