Did Tee Young want to do a geeblefisted kerwhillikie gumball plonker, and the judge saw it as such, but punched in the wrong number?
This is the closer one.
The way gymnastics works, before the athlete performs the routine, he submits that he is doing geeblefisted kerwhillikie gumball plonker. Basically, a "perfect" geeblefisted kerwhillikie gumball plonker gets a 10.0 score based on difficulty.
Athletes don't always do 10.0 routines though. They sometimes do hamfisted codswallop persnickity whomp, which when done perfectly, scores a 9.8 max. The risk is a lot lower though, so there is less chance he'll screw it up, but because it is less difficult, judges start their top score at a lesser value.
His geeblefist was too far to the left though, so he got a judge's interpretation of the standard deduction of .1, so ordinarily he would have gotten a 9.9, because it's risky and starts at a 10.0 theoretical maximum.
The error occurred though, in that before the athlete performed, the judges thought a "perfect" geeblefisted kerwhillikie gumball plonker is worth only a 9.9. So instead of getting a 9.9 like he should have, he got scored down to a 9.8.
Throw in the US team's contention that he did 4 plonkers instead of the 3, which would normally be a .2 deduction that the judges totally missed, and you have a huge mess on your hands.
There is a way to protest this, but according to the rules, the protest has to be filed before the next event (which occurs just minutes after the event in question). There is some controversy as to when the first Korean's tried to protest, but the official protest didn't come until two days later, well beyond what the rules state.
There are reasons for keeping protests timely, as in the next event, if Hamm knew he needed another .2 to win instead of .1, he might have tried a harder routine or the Korean might have done an easier one knowing he had a bigger cushion (well, probably not, but theoretically there is that option).
