Call for independence

"It's clear all these occurrences throw a very bad light on the FIG. We are aware that this is questioning the integrity of the federation," FIG secretary general Andre Gueisbuhler told Reuters in an interview.

In one of the biggest controversies of the Games, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) declared American Paul Hamm won the all-round gold due to a judging error.

South Korean bronze medallist Yang Tae-young should have come first but was incorrectly docked a 10th of a point from his parallel bars routine in the final 11 days ago. Three judges were suspended over the incident.

"Discussions will be on how to control the judges, how to have to better rules (concerning) protests during the competition," Gueisbuhler said.

He added that artistic gymnastics could follow the example of its rhythmic counterparts, where a pool of judges is tested and hired by the FIG and do not have any links to any national federations.

"To form an FIG judges pool is something we began in rhythmic gymnastics and I believe even without what happened here in the Olympic Games this is something we would have continued (in artistic gymnastics).

"We will do our best to correct whatever we have to do in the rulings in order to avoid such cases (of mistakes) in the future."

The Koreans appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Sunday to overturn the ruling body's decision after it refused to redistribute the all-round medals.

The admission of error by the FIG opened the floodgates as protests by Russian, Bulgarian and Canadian federations followed.

Russia's Alexei Nemov also handed the judges a reality check in front of a global television audience.

An angry crowd brought the horizontal bar final to a standstill for almost 10 minutes when they booed and jeered at the low mark awarded to Nemov for a spectacular routine on the apparatus.

The panel of adjudicators were forced to amend the Russian's score on the spot, further denting the credibility of the judging system.

"The moment you have a protest then everyone starts protesting," said Gueisbuhler.

"There was one serious mistake made and that was it. In all the other protests ... the scores were absolutely correct and there is no blame to be put on the judges or the FIG."

"We have no evidence of any intentional judges error in these Games and I think 99 percent or even more of the judges have judged the exercises with great responsibility and with high professional standards."

He continued: "After the cases we had here, those discussions will now be (a) priority and I would imagine we would see some changes at short term and see other changes in medium and long term.

"All of these changes need to be driven to guarantee the gymnasts get the correct score ..."