Beijing 2022: Olympic judge acknowledges error in controversial snowboard contest involving gold medal snub for Su Yiming

Beijing 2022: Olympic judge acknowledges error in controversial snowboard contest involving gold medal snub for Su Yiming

Su Yiming

The chief snowboarding judge at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics admitted his team made an error in the men’s slopestyle final. This resulted in a contest that controversially saw China’s 17-year-old sensation Su Yiming just miss out on a gold medal.

Iztok Sumatic, the judge, acknowledged the mistake in an interview with the snowboarding news site Whitelines on Tuesday, reckoning that he couldn’t change the past.

“We are entitled to have a replay wherever we think something went wrong. Just to scrutinize it a little bit more,” he said. “We didn’t get it. We just had this camera angle that they gave us and it looked clean.

“Basically, we judged what we saw. 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.

“Everything Max did was super clean and super good. As I said, we judged what we saw and everyone felt confident with it. This was the angle we were given on that.”

Parrot’s error goes unnoticed by judges panel

Max Parrot
Max Parrot

Earlier, Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot won the gold medal with his second run, which received a score of 90.96, while Su ranked second with 88.70. But during the former’s championship run, he made an error, grabbing his knee instead of his board during a trick but went away from the eyes of the judges.

During the live broadcast on the BBC, Leigh said: “We’re in a really difficult position, knowing that he’s in a gold medal position that, by the incredibly high standards the judges have set, he doesn’t deserve.”

“Max Parrot has taken gold with a big judging discrepancy,” he added.

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