(I thought this was a blatant and unfair)
THENS, Aug. 14 - Not a half-hour into the men's gymnastics preliminaries on Saturday, Blaine Wilson found himself in a position he never dreamed he would be in: flat on his back, head ringing and lips mouthing what he called "a few choice words" about the judges he later called cheats."The judges, they cheated," Wilson said later, miffed about his performance on the high bar.
During training at the Olympic Indoor Hall on Wednesday, the judges told the United States team that a high-bar move used by three of its gymnasts - Wilson, McClure and Jason Gatson - would not be worth as much as it had been at last year's world championships.
So, just a day before the preliminaries, Wilson and Gatson decided to replace the move with a more difficult one to keep their routines' start value at a 10.0. Wilson fell while executing that replacement move.
"You just can't have someone change something the day before the Olympics," he said. "It's just not fair."
Bob Colarossi, the president of USA Gymnastics, said he met Saturday morning with the international gymnastics federation's men's technical director, Adrian Stoica, to discuss the devalued move.
"They said they made a mistake in the past and there's nothing we could do about that," he said.