Fencing scandal at the 2012 Summer Olympics

Individual competitions of skewers took place on July 30, 2012 at the ExCel Center arena ^[2] . The semifinal duel between Sin A Ram and Britta Hademann took place in a very stubborn fight with a minimal number of attacking actions. Because of this, the athletes could not score 15 points necessary for victory. After three rounds the score was equal - 5: 5, as a result of which by the rules an additional minute was appointed before the first injection. By lot, in this case, one of the fencers gets priority, if after an additional minute the score is still equal, the athlete who has this priority wins ^[3] .
Priority fell to the Korean woman, which forced her German rival to constantly attack. But in 59 seconds, Heidemann was not able to break through Shin A Ram's defense in order to give a “one-flashlight” shot. When one second remained on the scoreboard, the German woman rushed to the attack twice, and each time both lamps were lit, indicating a mutual injection. Sin A Ram repeatedly appealed to the judge claiming that both Heidemann attacks obviously took some length of time, while the scoreboard was still on for 1 second. The third German attack, again culminating in a mutual injection, also did not change the time remaining until the end of the battle.
The fact is that at the time of the Olympics, the minimum unit of time in fencing was one second. If from the judge’s team "Allez!" less than one second passed before the injection, the time on the scoreboard remained the same. This imperfection of the timing system played in favor of Heidemann, who from the fourth time managed to inflict a decisive shot ^on her opponent ^[4] . It is worth noting that in this case, again, the numbers 0.01 remained on the scoreboard of the electronic stopwatch, since a little less than a second again passed from the judge’s team to the exact shot.
Sin A Ram refused to leave the track, as her departure would be confirmation that she admits defeat. At this time, Korean coaches protested the outcome of the battle. After an almost hour-long trial, he was rejected ^[5] . Korenka had to be content with a duel for a bronze medal with Chinese woman Sun Yujie , but exhausted by the semifinal and the scandal that followed him, she lost it relatively easily with a score of 11:15 ^[6] . Heidemann won silver in the end, losing one shot in the final to Ukrainian Yana Shemyakina . According to journalists, this was one of the most dramatic moments of the London Olympics ^{[7] [8]}

After the Olympics, Sin A Ram received a special medal from the International Fencing Federation (FIE) ^[9] , but refused her, explaining that “she does not believe that she will feel better from serving it, because this is not an Olympic award.” President of the Korean Olympic Committee, Park Yoon Sung, stated that "the award was an expression of FIE regret for what happened and recognition of the Olympic spirit of Sin A Ram" ^[10] .
Starting from the 2012-2013 season, the FIE has changed the rules for counting the time of fencing fights. Now the minimum time interval is one hundredth of a second ^[11] .

  Video of the last minutes of the battle