Olympic Bullshit - why does this always happen?

Referees are human and will make the occasional mistake, even at the highest levels. You've combined well intentioned mistakes (water polo), overzealous efforts to do a good job (as in the US/Canada soccer match) and outright cheating (boxing). Of course this is the Olympics and righting the wrong takes four years if ever but refs are still human.

In the US/Canada match, I can understand Sinclair being upset at a rare call, but no one has said the call was incorrect (that I've read) only that it is rare. Think of Serena Williams being called for a second serve foot fault in the 2009 US Open at a critical point at the end of the third set. Sinclair's comments directly accuse the ref of premeditated cheating. I don't see that.

This is from Wiki:

Competition issues
[edit]Men's Cycling Team Sprint
On 2 August, British cyclist Philip Hindes, during an interview immediately after the race, said that he deliberately crashed in an earlier round because he did not like the start he had. British team later responded claiming it was a misunderstanding and comments were lost in translation. Hindes also later retracted his original comment and said he just lost control and fell down. In Team Sprint, cyclists are allowed a restart if they crash or have an mechanical incident. The International Cycling Union said the result of the qualifying race “was not in question,” and the International Olympic Committee said it would not investigate.[95][96] The French team, which came second, accepts that the better team won, but also suggests team sprint regulation needs to be changed.[97][98]

[edit]Men's 66kg Judo judging
On 29 July in a quarter final match in the 66kg category, South Korean judoka, Cho Jun-ho received a unanimous 3-0 judging decision that he had beaten Japanese Ebinuma Masashi. However the result caused an immediate outbreak of booing and jeering from the crowd. [99] Almost immediately Marius Vizer, chief of the International Judo Federation, intervened and held a meeting with the match referee and two judges. Shortly afterwards the three officials returned to the mat; reversing their original decision by declaring Masashi the 0-3 winner. [100] South Korean officials launched an unsuccessful appeal but the result was upheld. [101]

[edit]Men's Team Artistic gymnastics judging
A judging controversy erupted at the all-around team event on July 30 after Japan's Kōhei Uchimura had a bad dismount off the pommel horse. The initial judging dropped Japan into fourth place, out of the medals, with China, Great Britain and Ukraine taking gold, silver, and bronze, respectively. However, after Japan filed a protest, the judges reviewed the tape and credited Uchimura with a dismount instead of a missed dismount, determining that he did indeed perform the final handstand. This raised Japan's score by 0.7 points, moving them from fourth to the silver medal position, dropping Great Britain to bronze and Ukraine out of the medals.[102][103][104][105]

[edit]Women's badminton doubles matches
A review of two matches in the Badminton Women's doubles competition played on 31 July was conducted after it appeared that, having already qualified for the knockout stages, players on both sides in each game had been attempting to lose their last group stage matches in order to gain a more favourable draw in the quarter finals. The matches were between China's Wang Xiaoli / Yu Yang and South Korea's Jung Kyung-eun / Kim Ha-na in Group A and South Korea's Ha Jung-eun / Kim Min-jung versus Indonesia's Meiliana Jauhari / Greysia Polii in Group C. After errors began occurring during routine shots in both matches, including shots going long and serves hitting the net, the crowd reacted badly,[106][107] and the match between Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli of China and Jung Kyung and Kim Ha Na of South Korea featured no rallies of more than four shots.[108]

In the second game, a tournament referee initially issued a black card to disqualify the players but, after the team's coaches argued, this was rescinded; play was allowed to continue while he monitored proceedings. Both the earlier match and this later match were ultimately played to a conclusion, completing the draw for the quarter finals (Group B and D having concluded earlier in the day). Technical delegate Paisan Rangsikitpho said after the Group A match, "If it's true what I hear, this is a shame and I don't like it. And I'm not going to accept anything that I don't like at all. It's not in a good spirit....I apologise to the public, I apologise for everyone and I am not happy."[109]

On 1 August 2012, following the review, all eight players were ejected from the tournament by the Badminton World Federation, after being found guilty of "not using best efforts" and "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport".[110]

Another of the incidents involved the Indian women's doubles badminton team of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa.[111] The Indian Badminton Federation lodged a complaint that the match between Mizuki Fujii/Reika Kakiiwa of Japan and Cheng Wen-hsing/Chien Yu-chin of Chinese Taipei was played suspiciously and that the better ranked Japanese pair lost the match willingly so that their future draws would be easy.[112] This led to the Indians missing the quarter-finals by a mere two points. However, the BWF examined the match and issued a reply that the footage showed no wrong play, despite large suspicions.[111]

[edit]Women's individual épée timing and appeal
South Korean fencer Shin A-Lam was embroiled in a prolonged controversy at the ExCeL Centre on 30 July 2012.[113] She had appeared to beat her opponent Britta Heidemann,[114] but an issue developed around the timing clock, which had appeared to reset to 1 second after having counted down to zero, allowing Heidemann to score the winning point.[115]

Shin was required to sit on the piste for almost an hour, often openly sobbing, while her coaches lodged an official complaint, prompting an announcer at the venue to confirm that moving from the piste would have been seen as indicating her acceptance of the ruling against her.[116] After losing the protest, Shin fought, and lost, against Yujie Sun of China thirty minutes later in the bronze medal match.[117]

[edit]Women's team sprint
China's Gong Jinjie and Guo Shuang twice set the world record, in qualifying and in the first round, and finished first in the final in 32.619. However, officials ruled the takeover between the pair was illegal and Germany, who clocked 32.798, were promoted to gold. Coach Daniel Morelon of France went so far as to deny that Guo Shuang and Gong Jinjie had violated any rules.

The organizing committee's official reports said the team had made an early relay, citing a specific regulation. China's appeal letter asserts that the regulation in question was not violated. The Chinese team claims the judges had a bad attitude when asked to watch a replay of the infraction.[118]

[edit]Men's boxing officiating
Referee Ishanguly Meretnyyazov was dismissed from the games after the men's 56 kg Round of 16 bout between Japan's Satoshi Shimizu and Azerbaijan's Magomed Abdulhamidov. During the third round of the fight, Abdulhamidov was knocked to the canvas six times. Meretnyyazov failed to issue a standing-eight count in any of the six instances.[119] The judges awarded the win to Abdulhamidov; a decision that was later overturned by the AIBA. The AIBA indicated that the fight should have been stopped and awarded to Shimizu after three knockdowns.[120]

German referee Frank Scharmach was suspended for five days after disqualifying Iran's Ali Mazaheri for excessive holding during his bout with Cuba's José Larduet.[119]

Another incident involved boxer Sumit Sangwan, who lost a closely contested bout 14-15 against Yamaguchi Falcao Florentino of Brazil. The ESPN commentators described the loss as "daylight robbery."[121] India's Chef-de-mission, on the insistence of Sports Minister Ajay Maken, lodged an unsuccessful appeal against the judges' decision believing he had won.[122]

A win by Vikas Krishan in the Welterweight Pre-Quarters was overturned after an appeal by the opponent Errol Spence. The Indian was given four penalty points and the score was changed from 11-13 to 15-13 in favour of Errol Spence. [123] India had approached the Court for Arbitration in Sport(CAS)[124] (after the appeal to the AIBA was rejected) but without any success.[125]

Boxer Manoj Kumar lost his pre quarter final bout against Great Britain's Tom Stalker in a controversial manner. The boxer was at the wrong end of some of the dubious judging calls and he cried "cheating" openly before leaving the boxing arena.[126]

In another incident involving a British boxer, Ukrainian world champion Evhen Khytrov was ruled to have lost to Anthony Ogogo after an 18-18 countback, despite two knockdowns. The National Olympic Committee of Ukraine protested the decision to AIBA.[127]

Well then, she should stop playing soccer, where matches are constantly decided on the basis of referee calls.

Anyway, my understanding is that the Canadian coach complained before the game about how the officials had been lax in calling fouls on the Americans. So the refs tightened up their officiating for the US-Canada game, and it bit the Canucks in the ass. I don't know what they say north of the border, but around these parts that comes under the heading of "what goes around, comes around."

This is only one example. I'm not complaining about officiating going against Canada, just the trend. It happens everywhere. Cheating, bad officiating, fixed judging. It flies in the face of good sportsmanship. I'm so glad they are bouncing the corrupt officials and cheating athletes.

I do think they try to "fix" this in a sense. For example - in gymnastics, they allow the coach to step up and challenge a score. The coach then has to give all the elements of the routine (not sure 100% of all the facts on this) but they re-review and decide if the score should change.

I've seen it used with the difficulty level as this is a bit less subjective meaning if you do this skill and that one you get a certain amount and from there get deducted if you make little mistakes (or big ones). This olympics it impacted two medals.

Not sure if I like it or not - but it is one way to correct a mistake as was stated above - judges/officials are human and make human errors. The athletes know this - and I think overall the olympics have gotten better in the respect of "fixing things" - there is much more scrutity now than years ago.

Doesn't take away from the fact that that was a horrible, horrible call. 'Rarely used'? How about no one can remember it ever being used.