Rhythmic Russians win gold

Russia's rhythmic gymnasts celebrate team gold

Russia won a tie-break over Belarus to claim the Olympic rhythmic gymnastics team gold medal on a night punctuated with boos, whistles and bewildering scores.

Russia, bronze medallist in Atlanta where the team event made its Olympic debut, finished level with Belarus on 39.500 points.

But the world champions were awarded the gold having obtained a higher mark in qualifying.

Greece took the bronze with 39.283.

Some puzzling scoring prompted an almost steady stream of jeers and whistles from a sold-out crowd, who seemed confused about what constituted a good performance.

The sport arrived in Sydney still reeling from a major judging scandal at last year's European championships that resulted in a total of eight judges being banned from working the Sydney Olympics and six others receiving one year suspensions.

Pink Floyd

Greece, who had posted the top score in qualifying, appeared to have their hopes of a medal disappear with a series of fumbled catches during their club rotation.

Performing to Pink Floyd's "The Wall", the Greeks were twice left chasing wayward clubs as they rolled around the mat, but still managed to finish the first rotation in third place with a mark of 19.550, ahead of several other teams who had produced clean efforts.

Russia and Belarus finished the first rotation tied at 19.800 and then again scored identical marks of 19.700 on the second rotation, the ribbons and hoops.