Olympic Champion in Rhythmic Gymnastics (Athens 2004), Alina Kabaeva, gives her view about the podium of Tokyo 2020. Although she has been outside the scope of the press for years, now she reveals her oppinion of the judging system in this competition.

She described the scoring as outrageous since Dina Averina (ROC) didn’t have major errors during her four exercises.

Dina Averina was great. She performed four wonderful exercises without drops. This was not the case of the gymnast from Israel, who had a big mistake with her ribbon routine. This mistake should have cost her 1 point, whilst judges deduced her only 0.7. You can’t win Olympic Games with such a big mistake.

Alina Kabaeva

Alina also blames the judges for making Dina wait for her last score. They took six minutes to give the final score. Concerning Kabaeva’s opinion, in Rhythmic Gymnastics the score should be given in less than two minutes if you execute a clear routine.

Judges calculated the score for Dina. They didn’t want Dina Averina to win. I only have to say that there is honest people and others, that they are not.

The whole situation spawned a big scandal in Russia. Two days ago, the International Gymnastics Federation (F.I.G) issued a press release about the fair scoring system.

Source: Exclusive Interview to Alina Kabaeva by “Russia 1”