The women's artistic individual all-around final at the 2000 Summer Olympics was held on 21 September at the Sydney SuperDome. The event was impacted by three separate scandals. The vault was set at the incorrect height for the first two rotations of the competition, causing several falls and injuries. The athletes who performed on the incorrectly set vault were allowed to vault again at the end of the competition. Initially, Andreea Răducan won the gold medal for Romania, but she tested positive for pseudoephedrine and was stripped of the medal. The gold medal was reallocated to her teammate Simona Amânar while Maria Olaru and Liu Xuan received the silver and bronze medals, respectively. In 2010, it was discovered that Dong Fangxiao was competing at these Olympic Games under a falsified birthdate and was too young to compete. In addition to China losing their team bronze medal, Dong's 25th-place finish in the all-around final was nullified.
Background
Svetlana Khorkina, the 1997 World champion and the reigning European champion was considered the favorite to win the final after qualifying in first place.[1] Her Russian teammates as well as their rivals, the Romanians, were all seen as contendors for the title.[2][3]Viktoria Karpenko was also considered a strong contender after finishing second at the 1999 World Championships.[4]
The qualification round was held on 17 September, and the 36 highest-scoring gymnasts advanced to the final. Each country was limited to three competitors in the final.[5]
Svetlana Khorkina performed well on the floor exercise and was the leader after the first rotation, but she fell on the vault during the second rotation.[6]Elise Ray also fell on her vault and landed on her back.[7] She noted after the competition that the vault looked low to her, but she attributed this feeling to nerves.[6] British gymnast Lisa Mason also believed the vault was too low, but her coach dismissed her concerns.[8] Her teammate Annika Reeder injured her ankle on the vault and withdrew from the rest of the competition,[9] and Brazil's Daniele Hypólito hit her head on the vaulting horse.[1] In total, eight out of 18 gymnasts fell on the vault during the first two rotations.[8]
During the warmups for the third rotation, Australian gymnast Allana Slater thought the vault looked too low after seeing it at the end of the runway. Her concern was only amplified after performing her warmup vault, so she told her coaches, Peggy Liddick and Nikolai Lapchine. Lapchine measured the vaulting horse height by comparing where it normally came up to on his body and told the competition officials that the vault was too low. After the officials brought out a tape measure, their suspicions were confirmed. The vault was set to a height of 120cm instead of 125cm. The Olympic staff then raised the vault to the proper height.[1][9][7] This difference in height was enough to throw off a gymnast's timing and technique, especially for taller gymnasts like Khorkina and Slater.[6] It could cause gymnasts to miss the contact between their hands and the vaulting horse, which had the potential to cause serious injures.[10][11][12]
During the third rotation, Khorkina, who had not heard about the chance to re-do her vault, fell off the uneven bars.[13][10] She ultimately decided against vaulting again.[1] Ray, also rattled from her mistakes on the vault, fell off the balance beam during the third rotation.[14] She chose to repeat her vault and improved her score from 7.618 to 9.487, allowing her to jump up 21 places in the standings and finish 14th.[6] Overall, only five of the 18 gymnasts who competed on the low vault chose to vault again.[14] Viktoria Karpenko led the competition heading into the last rotation, but she was thrown from first place after she stumbled on the floor exercise.[15]
Romanian gymnast Andreea Răducan initially won the gold medal while her teammates, Simona Amânar and Maria Olaru won silver and bronze, respectively. This marked the first time a country swept the women's all-around Olympic podium since the Soviet Union did so in 1960.[6]
Disqualifications
Andreea Răducan doping
Andreea Răducan, who initially won the event, had her medal stripped five days later after testing positive for pseudoephedrine.[16] Răducan was running a fever and had the common cold, so the team doctor gave her Nurofen, leading to the positive test.[17] She became the first gymnast to ever lose an Olympic medal due to a doping violation.[18] She was allowed to keep her other medals and results because she did not test positive for any banned substances aside from the day of the all-around final.[19] The team doctor who gave the medication was suspended through the 2004 Summer Olympics.[17] The International Olympic Committee (IOC) acknowledged that Răducan likely did not have a competitive advantage and was not at fault, but they had to apply to rules for failing the drug test.[17] Răducan and the Romanian Olympic Committee appealed the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but were denied.[20][21]
The gold medal and silver medals were reallocated to her teammates Simona Amânar and Maria Olaru while China's Liu Xuan was bumped up to the bronze medal.[19] Amânar and Olaru initially indicated they would refuse the new medals, and Liu expressed her support for Răducan.[22] All three declined a formal medal ceremony.[23] Amânar and Olaru did accept the medals before leaving Sydney.[24] After returning home, Amânar said of the gold medal, "I didn't win it. It was won by Andreea and belongs to Andreea."[25]
Răducan met with IOC president Thomas Bach in 2015 to discuss being reinstated as the gold medalist, but Bach upheld the decision, citing a strict-liability standard.[26]
Dong Fangxiao age falsification
Dong Fangxiao competed with documents stating her birthdate was 20 January 1983, but when she applied to be an official at the 2008 Summer Olympics, she listed her birthdate as 23 January 1986.[27] Her personal CV also listed the 1986 birthdate.[28] This 1986 birthdate meant she was only 14 years old at the 2000 Summer Olympics, which is two years below the FIG's minimum age requirement.[29][30] This prompted an FIG investigation which found that Dong was ineligible to compete in Sydney. Consequently, China lost its bronze medal from the team competition, and all of Dong's results from the Olympics were nullified,[31][32] including her 25th-place finish in the all-around final.[33] Her teammate Yang Yun, who finished fifth in the all-around final and won bronze on the uneven bars, was also investigated after she admitted on national television that she was only 14 years old at the time of the Olympic Games,[34][35] but the FIG did not find enough evidence to nullify her results.[29][36]
Three days after the competition, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) issued an apology statement for the vault error and said they would add new specification checks for the equipment.[39] The FIG also noted that the officials responsible were reprimanded but did not reveal the details.[10] The Sydney 2000 Olympic organizers also issued an apology.[40] It was later discovered that there was an error in the paperwork that laid out the proper dimensions for the apparatus.[1] In 2001, the FIG introduced the redesigned vault which changed the vaulting horse to a vaulting table, giving gymnasts a wider surface area to put their hands on and reducing the risk of serious injuries.[11][12]
In 2021, the Blind Landing podcast released its first season, which covered the events of the all-around final. The podcast featured interviews from Ray, Khorkina, Slater, Olaru, and Mason.[8]
