Mark McMorris apologizes to Max Parrot in spat over slopestyle gold at Winter Olympics

Mark McMorris and Max Parrot

Slopestyle gold medal winner Max Parrot said compatriot snowboarder Mark McMorris has apologized to him for saying that he only won because of questionable judging at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Parrot admitted to The Associated Press on Saturday that he failed to fully execute a grab on the first jump of the slopestyle course. The Cowansville native said he was lucky the judges didn’t see it but maintained he still had the best run of the day and earned his first gold at the Games.

For those who don’t know, McMorris finished third, 2.43 points behind Parrot while China’s Su Yiming grabbed silver owing to the controversial decision by the judges.

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“Obviously it would have been nice to have a different shade of medal. But knowing that I kind of had the run of the day and one of the best rounds of my life and the whole industry knows what happened — pretty, pretty crazy,” McMorris said during an interaction with CBC Sports.

“He apologized for his non-sportsmanship” – Parrot

Max Parrot mentioned that there were no hard feelings over McMorris’ comments and the latter has apologized for the same.

“He actually came to me earlier today and he apologized for his non-sportsmanship,” Parrot said. “I told him no worries.”

“They probably missed a lot of other things as well on other riders’ runs that day,” Parrot said. “But you know, I understand the focus is on me, as I’ve won.”

“I didn’t have any mistakes on five of the six features,” he added. “And on the one jump, I made a bigger mistake. And yeah, I definitely say that it’s a big mistake to not be able to hold the grab for the whole time.

“But how do you compare that? One big mistake versus multiple, small mistakes over the most technical run? That’s why it’s a judged sport.”

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