A shameful final

After the scandal of the rigged ranking for the men’s rings contest, where Andrea Coppolino and Matteo Morandi have been unfairly penalized to ensure the silver medal to the Chinese Yang Wei, another shameful verdict concerning the gymnastics rhythmic event.

Italy ranked the 4th place in the group all-around final even if the Russia, gold medal, do not even deserve to step on to the podium, and China, silver medal, deserved the bronze, at most. One of the Russian athletes was completely out of form, and the team did several glaring errors.

But the most outrageous show, never seen before in an Olympic competition, was when the judges kissed and applauded the Russian and Chinese teams! Absolutely unfair. At Beijing Olympic Games the gymnastics completely lost its credibility. The performance of the Italian team (Elisa Blanchi, Fabrizia D’Ottavio, Marinella Falca, Daniela Masseroni, Elisa Santoni, Angelica Savrajuk) was close to be perfect, but Italy was cheated by the umpires who assigned a low score to Italian exercises to let the China to win at least a medal: a political decision.