The last day of taekwondo was yesterday.
As usual, the scoring system sucks, but there were some good fights. What was really amazing - and I know I should probably be mortified but as it is I'm more "jeez, what a fucking idiot" - was this:
Yes, that's the Cuban fighter in the mens' heavyweight bronze medal contest, kicking the ref in the head after being declared "out" when he got up from an injury break as the time-limit bell went off.
Now, the ref was being officious, and the Cubans would have been right to make an official protest - and they might have got that overturned, especially with the crowd hating his Kazakh opponent for triumphalist dancing and flag waving at the time. But, no, he whacked the ref and got disqualified.
After the final in which the Greek victim of last Olympics' final TKO actually went the distance this time, his fans decided to have a fight in the stands with the stewards as well.
I've never seen the like. And it's a shame, because it's all people will remember from this year's competition. The scoring controversy over Sarah Stevenson might be a vague memory, and nobody will remember the great bouts and the bravery of injured competitors going on. Certainly it's a disappointing alternative to the last Olympics' memory of that amazing jump-spin-back-kick KO in the first couple of seconds of the men's heavyweight final.
(I was somewhat amused by the English commentator's attempts to think of something to say, having spent the whole week bigging up how you should take up taekwondo to legitimately kick people in the head - a tack which came back to bite him in the arse!)
