ATHENS, Greece - The ruling body of gymnastics (FIG) denied on Saturday putting pressure on all-round champion Paul Hamm to hand over his gold medal to South Korea’s Yang Tae-young, saying the decision should be left to the American.

U.S. Olympic chiefs reacted furiously on Friday to a letter in which the FIG president Bruno Grandi suggested Hamm should give his gold to bronze medalist Yang after the federation admitted the American won the title due to a judging error.

“All Bruno Grandi did in the letter was to open the door to Paul Hamm and ask him to consider whether he would return the medal ... on basis of fair play and respect to another competitor,” FIG secretary general Andre Gueisbuhler told Reuters in an interview.

“Bruno Grandi will always respect the decision of the athlete whatever he does. Things like this are very, very personal decisions of every athlete and his own conscience.”

In one of the biggest controversies of the Athens Games, the FIG declared Yang should have come first and Hamm should have got silver after the South Korean was incorrectly docked 10th of a point from his parallel bars routine in the final 10 days ago.

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The FIG has suspended the three judges involved but said it has no mechanism to overturn the final standings.

“No one should make any judgment on Paul Hamm about his decision, that would be absolutely unfair,” said Gueisbuhler.

“This is a decision only Paul Hamm has to take and the whole world has to accept his decision whether he says yes or no.

“The FIG will never decide he has to give it back.

“We have nothing to hide and the last thing we would do is put pressure on an athlete and put our own mistakes on anybody else.”

In a letter addressed to Hamm and released by the U.S. Olympic committee on Friday, the FIG wrote: “The true winner of the all-round competition is Yang Tae-young.”

The U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) denounced the letter as an improper and outrageous attempt to shift responsibility for an FIG mistake on to the shoulders of the 21-year-old athlete.

The letter also said the “IOC (International Olympic Committee) would “highly appreciate the magnitude of this gesture.”

On Saturday, Gueisbuhler admitted Grandi had not discussed the issue with the IOC.

“There was no way we wanted to drag the IOC into this. In fact Bruno Grandi did not speak to the IOC before,” Gueisbuhler said.

“He was probably referring to past examples where the IOC gave a medal of fair play to a gymnast who acted similarly in such a case.

“He (Hamm) is 100 percent legitimate to keep the medal, he is the winner of the Games, there is no doubt about that. The FIG has not and will not change the result.”

Hamm returned to the United States earlier this week. He declined comment Friday through his agent, but he has said in the past that he has no intention of giving up his medal unless ordered to do so by FIG.

In an interview Friday night with NBC, Hamm said he’ll abide by whatever FIG decides, but that “I just feel like I’ve done nothing wrong in this whole situation.”

“I competed my heart out at the Olympic Games. I played by the rules and I won by the rules,” he said. “I feel like I’m handling it pretty well. Obviously, you know I’m a little bit upset with how this whole situation was handled.”

Yang, the bronze medalist, was wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his second-to-last routine. He finished third, 0.049 points behind Hamm. Add the extra 0.100, and Yang would have finished 0.051 points ahead of Hamm. That’s assuming, of course, that everything in the final rotation would have played out the same way.

U.S. officials say the South Koreans failed to officially contest the judging error during the competition, which is the only way to change the marks according to FIG rules.

Yang has stayed on in Athens in the hope of claiming his medal and his federation expect to lodge an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) before the end of the Games on Sunday.