Gymnastics is finally over and it's time to reflect on the coverage and the performances. I have three main thoughts about this.

1) NBC really needs to rethink their commentary team. Team Trautwig is not getting the job done and Elfi Schlegal in particular needs to be put out to pasture. We don't need the Canadian perspective that badly.

2) The level of gymnastics in the world has fallen off the high bar. While these are still incredible atheletes, never have I seen so many miss routines, make simple mistakes, and fall on their collective asses. It's one thing to miss your grip on a difficult release move. It's another thing entirely to fall off doing a giant swing. And if Paul Hamm can fall on his kiester and literally have to be held up by the judges in the vault and then come back to win the all-around gold medal, something is lacking in the rest of the field. That never would have happened in the days of Nemov, and Sherbo. Korea's Yang Tae-Young might deserve the gold medal, but if he can only beat a guy who fell on his ass by a tenth of a point, then he's hardly going to fit into the pantheon of the sport's all-time greats.

This brings up the whole concept of whether or not gymnastics and other subjective judgment based "sports" ought to be in the Olympics at all. On top of the Hamm controversy, we saw Bulgaria charge hometown bias in scoring of the men’s rings against Jordan Jovtchev, Svetlana "can someone bring her a sandwich" Khorkina claim American-biased judges cheated her in the all-around, and Russia — along with most of the Athens crowd — complain that Alexei Nemov was robbed on the high bar.

3) Despite these problems, I love to watch the gymnastics. And I found some hope, at least on the men's side, that this Olympics provided a great springboard for the future. In the event finals, not only was each event won a different athlete, but none were from Japan, USA, or Romania, the winners in the team competition.

Kyle Shewfelt, Canada, Floor Exercise
Teng Haibin, China, Pommel Horse
Dimosthenis Tampakos, Greece, Rings
Igor Cassina, Italy, High Bar
Valeri Goncharov, Ukraine, Parallel Bars
Gervasio Deferr, Spain, Vault

Marian Dragelescu of Romania probably should have won the vault, but he didn't. So we have 5 of the 6 winners, China being the notable exception, from non-traditional powers. This bodes well for the breadth of the sport. On the other hand, what the hell has happened to Russia and Belarus?

In the final analysis, the judges and the governors of the sport have an incredible amount of work to do to iron out the wrinkles in the system so that we are not faced with similar problems in Beijing.