Ex-Canadian competing for Australia should have won gold: official
An Australian sport official accused judges of awarding inflated scores to Canadian Alex Bilodeau Sunday, allowing him to edge out Dale Begg-Smith for gold in men’s moguls.
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Coach Steve Desovich refused to criticize the judges, but said he thought Begg-Smith deserved gold.
This is the problem I have with “own the podium” rhetoric and, ultimately, with the way the Olympics is structured as a competition. At that level, there are *lots* of people who *deserve* gold. When the difference between two performances is an insignificant .17 points, they should be equally celebrated.
Otherwise, it’s not a matter of who performed better. It’s only a matter of who scored better. Sorry if this is cynical, but the Olympics are more about the scoring than the performances.