No suggestion of rule changes despite four-way tie for gold, Kim claims

FIG Women's Technical Committee President Nellie Kim says there are no plans in place to change the rules despite the four-way tie in the women's uneven bars ©FIG

International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) Women’s Technical Committee President Nellie Kim refused to be drawn on suggestions that future World Championships should have a tie-breaking rule after four gymnasts were awarded gold in the women’s uneven bars event here yesterday.

Kim, a five-times Olympic gold medallist, claimed it was “up to the FIG Executive Committee” to decide following an historic result, where Russians Daria Spiridonova and Viktoria Komova, Madison Kocian of the United States and China’s Fan Yilin all finished on a score of 15.366 points.

With no tie-breaking rule in place, all four athletes won gold for the first time in the history of the World Championships and no silver or bronze medals were handed out.

The unprecedented occurrence has led to calls for the rules to be changed in order to avoid a repeat, with even Kocian admitting after the competition that she “wasn't sure if they were going to do a tie-breaker”.

“Those are the rules at World Championships,” Kim said.

“When the execution scores were added the result was a coincidence.

"I don't think that even if the judges wanted to do this on purpose they could have calculated it.

"It was just one of those things that happened.

"If we had followed the Olympic rules, we would have had fewer gold medals."

The 2015 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships have been widely praised ©Getty Images

FIG President Bruno Grandi, due to step down from the role next year after 20 years in charge of world gymnastics’ governing body, also claimed he was “satisfied” with the judging at the event here in Glasgow, claiming it had been “better” than previous World Championships.

His comments follow disciplinary proceedings being opened against 14 judges who officiated at the 2014 World Championships in Nanning, China, after some of the scores given “appeared biased or unsatisfactory”, though the cases against half of them were dismissed.

A total of seven judges were warned by the FIG.

The decision came after FIG’s Disciplinary Commission recently suspended two judges for bias at the 2014 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships in Izmir, Turkey, with three others given warnings.

The Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, which came to a conclusion today, have widely been regarded as a success, with Grandi adding that all of their flagship events should be conducted in the manner seen here over the past 10 days.

“These World Championships have been wonderful in every aspect,” he said.

“I would like to thank the city, because gymnastics, this magnificent sport, needs to try to continue to organise competitions in this way.”

The Artistic Gymnastics World Championships are not held in an Olympic year with the next event due to take place in Montreal in 2017.