Head judge admits scoring error on Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot which snubbed Su Yiming's gold

By Global Times
Published: Feb 10, 2022 05:50 PM

Su Yiming competes in the men's slopestyle final at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on February 7. Photo: VCG

Head judge of snowboarding admitted there has been a mistake in judging in the men's slopestyle saying gold medalist Max Parrot should have had 3 points taken away, which should have made Su Yiming from China the winner.

In men's slopestyle final in Beijing on Monday, Parrot won the gold medal with his second run which received a score of 90.96, while Su ranked 2nd with 88.70. However, during Parrot's championship run, he made a turnover and grabbed his knee instead of his snowboard in one trick, which was not caught by the judges.

Iztok Sumatic, who is the head judge of the final, compared the incident to the misjudgment of Diego Maradona's famous hand of God goal in a recent interview with top snowboarding magazine Whitelines.

Sumatic said that he, along with all the judging team, was not provided with the replay that the audience saw on television broadcast.

"Basically, we judged what we saw," he said. "And what we saw was a grab and a well-executed switch frontside 16 - from the point of view of a camera that we were given."

Sumatic said that he did indeed see the image that people saw on TV, which shows clearly Parrot's turnover, but it was too late as the score was already in.

"It would be different scores [if we had seen that Parrot missed the grab]," the head judge admitted.

According to the scoring criteria, Parrot should have forfeited three points by missing the grab, which would have lowered his score to 87.96, and made Su Yiming the winner.

Right after Parrot got his score, commentators expressed dissatisfaction toward the ruling. Ed Leigh, BBC's commentator, said during the game that it was fairly obvious that a mistake had been made. "There is a glaring judging error putting Max Parrot in gold," he said.

A large number of netizens have demanded that the judges explain the error, including fans of the bronze medalist Mark McMorris, also from Canada, who would have won the silver if Parrot lost a few points.

Generally, if snowboarders are not satisfied with the scoring, they can file an appeal after the game. However, usually, they can only appeal their own scoring, and cannot apply for a re-judgment of other snowboarders' score, so Su faced a relatively rare and tricky situation.

Nonetheless, in previous Winter Olympics, there have been instances where gold medals were awarded retroactively. At the 2002 Winter Olympics held in Salt Lake City in the US, the scoring by the judges was deemed not fair enough and caused a massive protest. In the end, two pairs of figure skaters received gold medals.

This existing case has led many of Su's supporters to call on his team to make another appeal for a replacement gold medal for him.

Other netizens left comments that mistakes in scoring by judges are inevitable. "Su's level has been recognized and he should concentrate on preparing for the match afterwards."

Su himself seemed to have taken the controversial finish in good spirits, which also won him praise from his supporters and netizens.

"To be able to take part in the Winter Olympics in my home country, to be able to compete with my childhood idol and stand with them on the podium, this is a very precious moment in my life," Su told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV after the game.

"To me, this is very special."