Gymnast Aly Raisman lost the Olympic bronze in the gymnastics individual all-around competition in a heartbreaking way Thursday to Aliya Mustafina.
Coming in as a tie, Raisman thought she had won the bronze a long with Mustafina but she fell to fourth place in a scorecard tiebreaker.
Both Raisman and Mustafina each scored 59.566 and the new tiebreaker rules, which were implemented in June, states that they throw out the lowest of the four events scores and then add up the remaining three. The tiebraker gave Mustafina a score of 45.933 and Raisman a 45.366.
According to USA TODAY, Raisman said, "I'm trying to stay positive about it. Of course it's a huge bummer, but I'm still fourth in the world, so that's something to be proud of."
The tiebreaker rules worked in a way that Raisman seemingly got punished at the end for having more consistent scores.
For example, her scores all ranged between 14.200 and 15.900 while Mustafina's were more inconsistent: 16.100 on the bars, 15.233 on the vault, 14.600 and 13.633 on the beam.
Mihai Brestyan, Raisman's coach said, ""It's a shame. I don't think it's fair."
Gymnastics is the only Olympic sport that this would ever happen in. In any other sport in the Olympics, duplicate medals are usually given to the tied competitors or there is another race or competition to break the tie.
Martha Karolyi, the National team coordinator said that she didn't understand what happened to Raisman on the beam and that she is usually very calm. She said, "I am extremely disappointed (for Raisman)."
Gabby Douglas from the U.S. took gold and Russia's Viktoria Komova came in second at the event.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
