Error in Decision Takes Away Young Olympian’s Gold Medal Dream at Beijing Winter Olympics 2022

As the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 are going on, athletes from around the world are hoping to win gold. Competitors who fail to reach the podium in their events feel disappointed, and even more so when they narrowly miss out on some big accomplishments.

That was the case with Chinese snowboarder Su Yiming. Yiming is a teenage phenomenon, competing with the best snowboarders in the world all while being seventeen.

Sadly for Yiming, he very narrowly missed out on the gold medal on February 7, at the men’s slopestyle event. It would appear that the Olympic judges for the event misjudged Max Parrot, who won the Gold. Owing to this, Yiming missed out on the top step of the podium, having to settle for the silver medal.

Head Judge at Beijing Winter Olympics 2022 admits mistake

It was a controversial finish to the snowboarding slopestyle event which saw Su Yiming finish second to Canadian Max Parrot. Now, the chief snowboarding judge at the Winter Olympics has admitted the error in judgment.

Speaking to Whitelines, Iztok Sumatic, the Head Judge, shared his perspective with the world about what happened. Here’s what happened- Max Parrot won the gold medal, but the first jump of his winning run came under scrutiny.

Parrot supposedly went for a board grab, for which he scored points, too. However, different viewing angles showed that he held his knee instead of the board. Shockingly, the judges gave him the points for the board grab, which otherwise should’ve resulted in a deduction of points.

In fact, it later emerged that the judges were not provided with replays of some angles that viewers across the world could see. Sumatic, the Head Judge, shared how the judges are “entitled to have a replay” wherever they sense something wrong. However, they didn’t choose to get a review because from the camera angle they had, “it looked clean”.

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Sumatic admitted that they (the judging panel) “judged what (they) saw, and everyone felt confident with it”. Moreover, he also claimed that “whoever watched it from that angle,” if they had been in the judges’ position, “would have said that’s a good execution”.

Thus, owing to this error, Max Parrot of Canada won the gold medal over teenage star Su Yiming. Moreover, it wasn’t too huge a margin either. Parrot was victorious by a margin of 2.26 points, which wouldn’t have been there had he been scored negatively for the missed board grab as he should have.

Two incredible stories scripted at the slopestyle finals

Regardless of what happened at the men’s slopestyle final, both Max Parrot and Su Yiming scripted history at the Beijing Winter Olympics. The gold medalist, Max Parrot, had found out in late 2018 that he had cancer.

Parrot suffered from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a rare form of cancer. Consequently, he lost a year off the sport while battling the disease.

Ultimately, after 12 rounds of chemotherapy, Max Parrot was finally cancer-free in 2019. Just a little over two years later, he won the gold medal at snowboarding in Beijing. One couldn’t have had a better comeback story even if they tried scripting one.

On the other hand, seventeen-year-old Su Yiming created history of his own. The young snowboarder became China’s first snowboarder to win an Olympic medal, bringing truth to his reputation as the teenage prodigy.

Yiming further stated that he was extremely happy that he was happy to be sharing the podium with the athletes he considered his titles.

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