As if a putrid parody of the Last Supper, a revolting glorification of the Reign of Terror, zero air-conditioning for athletes in the name of going green, a sewer to swim in, worms in food, missing meat, and men beating women and taking home boxing medals, weren't bad enough, the Olympics has managed to do one more act of incompetence as it closes up in Paris.

According to the New York Times:

The International Olympic Committee confirmed on Sunday that it would strip Chiles of her bronze medal and give it to Romania’s Ana Barbosu. The decision came after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled on Saturday that Chiles’s coach had filed a scoring inquiry four seconds too late, according to gymnastics rules.

The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee said Sunday that it would appeal the reallocation of Chiles’s medal, and by Sunday afternoon, U.S.A. Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body in America, had begun that fight.

In a statement posted on its social media accounts, U.S.A. Gymnastics said it had filed a letter and video evidence that it said showed “conclusively” that the U.S. coaching staff had requested an inquiry 47 seconds after Chiles’s final score was posted — well within the limit, it argued, that is imposed by the sport’s rules.

So the American athlete placed fifth due to a scoring error by the judges. The U.S. appealed, the error was fixed, and then the American got a third-place bronze medal. The Romanians, whose team member had won the bronze earlier, was out the bronze, just like that beauty queen who, being victim of an incompetent announcer at the Miss Universe pageant a few years ago, had to take her crown off after she had paraded down the runway, and give it to some other contestant.

The Romanians were so mad, given that they were trying to make an Olympic comeback to their past glory days, their prime minister boycotted the Olympic closing ceremony. This was their baby, too.

It didn't end there. Then the medal order was reversed again, the Romanian gymnast got the bronze back, the American had to give it up, based on a claimed 64-second delay in appealing the judge's misjudgments, when only 60 seconds was permitted, so too bad about the American.

Then it got ugly again as the Americans said they had proof they made their appeal 46 seconds after the misjudgment, and the Americans won't give the medal back. The Olympic judges say to give it back. The Americans say 'no.' Chiles, the athlete in question, is 23 years old and it's probably her last chance to win any sort of medal on the Olympic stage.

Which is where we are now.

It doesn't get more obnoxious than this, and one feels for the athlete who first has and then doesn't have, the sought-after prize. It was even worse, as we watch it get passed back and forth based on technicalities, when the reality is, there was a mistake, and the judges should not have made that mistake.

All the same, one feels for both athletes. Some sports are more competitive than others in the Olympics, as this demonstration of break dancing indicates. Some athletes are just naturals, as this famously nonchalant Turkish athlete explained, and some train like hell for years to prepare. Some events offer a lot of medals, some events offer just a few.

The gymnastics section of the Olympics is about the most competitive of all of them, takes years of training like hell to get there, and offers only a few medals.

So the Olympic judges made this blunderbuss of a mistake, haven't apologized, and now the Romanian and American teams are looking over the rules with a fine tooth comb to be able to argue that their team member gets the third-place bronze medal over the other.

That's disgusting. That is not what the Olympics are about.

The bad guy here is the Olympic judges who weren't that good at their jobs, failing to see that athlete Jordan Chiles was getting her due points in the score the first time, and triggered the controversy. Now it's back and forth, back and forth, the coaches and team bureaucrats wrangling with the judges over who gets the medal.

What needs to be done is that the Olympic judges admit their incompetence, hand both athletes a bronze medal, leave the athletes to claim what their score really was, and dust off their hands and do better.

That seems to be the least they can do to fix this. Each athlete can go home with a bronze, get their parades, perks, and endorsement deals and leave the matter at that.

Give out two medals for two jobs well done -- and a booby prize to the Olympic judges who botched this.

Image: Twitter screen shot