when one is talking about cheating in a sporting event, one is usually referring to one of the competitors deliberately committing a violation of the rules.

Which is why I specifically preceded that statement by saying it was the IOC who cheated, and that it wasn't a purposeful form of cheating. So, yeah, I covered that. I'm still not seeing where the confusion is coming from.

Normally, one doesn't call an honest mistake by a timekeeper, cheating.

I didn't. Again, I've covered this quite thoroughly. I'm beginning to feel like I should just requote everything I've said on this and put it in a new post rather than put out more words trying to explain what I've already explained.

Yeah you can still IOC cheated Shim out of a metal, it is not exactly the same thing as saying actually cheating had occurred. understand?

No. That's a completely contradictory statement, so I don't understand.

The only reason I ever decided to use the term "cheating" is because, up until that point, you seemed convinced this was just some nebulous definition of "common sense" debate, and that I was somehow advocating to break the rules, but you didn't seem to be picking up on my assertion that the rules were flagrantly broken. I was hoping that using such a strong word (one I certainly feel is accurate, and one your 1972 basketball team would and did use to describe their situation) would help you to see what I was really talking about. Instead, you somehow roped Heidelmann into this when I never even mentioned her.