HW # 6, Due Thursday, September 11th!

Read the article below about Lukin finishing second to He. Create an inverted pyramid for this article with three levels of information -- provide three pieces of information at each level.

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-Mr. Donohue

For Liukin, Being Just as Good Is Not Good Enough to Win Gold

By JULIET MACUR

BEIJING — At first, Nastia Liukin did not realize how close she had come to yet another gold.

After performing her uneven bars routine Monday, she saw her name in second place and glanced over the scores, assuming she was at least one- or two-tenths of a point behind He Kexin of China.

But, upon closer inspection, she noticed something strange about the gymnast in first and the gymnast in second.

“Dad, I think we have the same score,” she told her father, Valeri, as she nudged him.

He answered: “Oh. Yeah.”

As the competition went on, Nastia Liukin — who won the all-around gold last Friday — wondered how she could be in second behind He, when they each had scored 16.725. After much discussion, she learned the unfortunate explanation.

Dual medals are no longer awarded in Olympic gymnastics, as they were through the 1996 Atlanta Games. A tie breaker is now used for gymnasts with the same score. In the tie-breaking formula, He was given the gold medal because she had a lower average of deductions. The margin was a whisper-thin 0.033 points.

He, who is listed as 16, but whose age has been at issue at these Olympics, won the gold. Liukin, 18, won silver, her fourth medal of these Games.

Yang Yilin of China, a 15-year-old whose age has also been questioned, won bronze, with 16.650. To be eligible for this Olympics, gymnasts must turn 16 this year. Some Chinese sports registration lists suggest that He and Yang may be as young as 14.

“I still don’t know how they broke the tie,” Liukin said after the medal ceremony. “I guess one judge liked her better.

“But, like my dad said, at the end of the day, I have the most important medal,” she said of the all-around gold. “That’s the most important thing. If it happened in the all-around, I would have been much more upset.”

Once again at the Beijing Games, the Chinese had a strong showing in gymnastics, winning three of the four gymnastics gold medals given out Monday.

Chen Yibing won the still rings, draping himself in the Chinese flag and smiling so hard his dimpled cheeks could be seen from across the arena. His teammate He Wenna won the women’s trampoline, bouncing up and down on the apparatus like a schoolgirl afterward until an official shooed her down.

The only non-Chinese gymnast to win a gold was Leszek Blanik, who won the vault and Poland’s first-ever gymnastics gold medal.

“I am so happy that I can bring happiness to the people of my country,” he said. “If I wasn’t able to do this, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

As it turned out, Blanik also won in a tie breaker, over Thomas Bouhail of France. Blanik seemed as confused as Liukin about how that happened, saying: “I don’t know exactly how I won. I guess it is a special rule for judges.”

That rule left Bouhail in tears.

Bruno Grandi, the president of the international gymnastics federation, or F.I.G., said the tie breakers were “very disastrous.” He said he would rather see two gold medalists when gymnasts scored the same, but the International Olympic Committee decided the rules at the Olympics.

“For me, it’s not correct,” Grandi said. “When two people arrive at the same level, why not make them both champions?

“I believe it’s correct to have two gold medals, but this is my modest opinion,” he said. “The I.O.C. is different.”

The F.I.G. still awards dual medals at its world championships, but has used the tie-breaker system since 1997 in its qualifying rounds.
The dual-medal rule of old was good to Liukin’s father.

At the 1988 Seoul Games, he won a gold medal on the high bar — and so did his Soviet teammate Vladimir Artemov. Each received a gold and shared the top spot on the podium because they had the same score.

This time, though, Valeri Liukin said he was disappointed with the outcome.

“It’s not easy for any gymnast to finish second,” he said. “It’s a human being judging. I guess that’s what it comes down to.”

Liukin said she made a small error on a release move, then had trouble with a pirouette.

Still, she stuck her landing, and He did not. To keep her balance, He crossed one foot over the other.

It was a close call for the judges, but for He, it was a surprise.

“I didn’t expect to win a gold medal because the more I want it, the more pressure I feel,” He said. “It’s more nerve-racking than competing with the whole team.”

While their scores ended up the same, He and Liukin did not look similar on the bars. He, who is 4 feet 8 inches and 73 pounds, spun around the bars and twisted her body so quickly, her routine seemed like a blur.

Liukin, a long-limbed gymnast who is 5-3 and 100 pounds, looked more balletic, as if she were performing to music only she could hear.

It was that grace, many say, that gave Liukin the edge over the small, muscled Shawn Johnson in the all-around. But on Monday, her long lines and agility could not give her the edge she needed to win.

Liukin said she thought the scoring was fair, even mentioning that she thought Yang might have been underscored. In a subjectively judged sport, outcomes like this sometimes happened, she said.

The more important thing for Liukin is that she now has four Olympic medals, as her father does. She has one more chance to better him, when she competes in the balance beam finals Tuesday.

“As soon as I leave this arena, I’m going to forget this,” Liukin said of the tie breaker turned heartbreaker.