Sports Big Business No. 2804, welcome to pay attention to the leading sports industry information platform
Wen | Fu Zhenghao
Sports big business reporter
Without the slightest surprise, the short-track speed skating project once again fell into public controversy at the Beijing Winter Olympics, just like the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics four years ago.
However, dramatically, the most fierce people in this time are precisely the South Koreans who publicly praised the fairness and impartiality of the referee four years ago. And the Countrymen who now mock South Koreans for not being able to lose have more or less denounced referees and South Korea's home advantage four years ago. Why does a short track speed skating competition always accurately ignite the mutual spray of public opinion between China and South Korea?
The south Korean and Hungarian complaints were rejected, and south Korea appealed to CAS after a gap of 18 years
After the men's 1,000m race on the evening of February 7, South Korea, a traditional powerhouse in short track speed skating, and Hungary, both filed a complaint with the International Skating Federation (ISU), saying that their own players had suffered unfair penalties in the competition, and the referee had dominated the ownership of the medals, ruining the efforts of the players. However, the International Skating Union subsequently rejected the complaints of both delegations. According to the express provisions of the International Skating Union, it is not permissible to appeal the decision of the referee to disqualify the athlete from the competition or not to disqualify the athlete for violating any of the rules of the competition.
After the complaint was rejected, on February 8, the angry South Korean sports delegation held a media conference directly at the Main Media Center of the Beijing Winter Olympics, at which the head of the South Korean sports delegation, Yoon Hong-geun, reiterated that two South Korean athletes had been unfairly punished, and said that he would appeal to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and directly protest to IOC President Bach. This is the first time in nearly 18 years that South Korea has appealed to CAS during an Olympic match. Choi Yong-joo, head of the Korean Short Track Speed Skating Support Group and international referee of short track speed skating, said that from the perspective of a senior referee, the Korean players did not foul, and the on-site referee seemed to misread the gestures of the Chinese players. In South Korea, the matter is even more outrageous, and even several presidential candidates are using this matter to solicit votes, denouncing the INTERNATIONAL Skating Federation referees for tarnishing the Olympic spirit and accusing Chinese players of stealing gold medals by virtue of their home advantage.
Although all parties have their own opinions and debates about whether the referee's decision is fair, an objective fact is that since short track speed skating officially became a Winter Olympic event in 1992, almost every Winter Olympics has questioned the referee's decision. Before the start of the Winter Olympics, south Koreans were most worried about the men's 1500m short track speed skating final at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. At that time, South Korea's Kim Dong-sung was the first to cross the finish line but was found guilty of a foul, and the gold medal was awarded to host Apollo. What the mainland people still remember is probably the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. China's short track speed skating, the "master of kings" of China's winter sports, was sentenced to as many as 8 fouls, which directly led to the Chinese short track speed skating team only winning 1 gold and 2 silver, which in turn led to China's worst performance since 2002 at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. At that time, the Chinese people's penalty logic for short-track speed skating referees was greatly exaggerated, and mocked South Korea's home advantage as too obvious, and its momentum was even greater than that of South Korea today.
Throughout the nearly 100-year history of the Winter Olympics, there has not been such a big controversy as any sport like short track speed skating, and one accepted reason is that the short track speed skating project itself does have imperfect rules and ambiguities. At first glance, short-track speed skating belongs to the racing category, and the competition is the speed of the players themselves, which is very different from the difficulty skills of the Winter Olympics that require the referee to score. However, at the same time, in many Winter Olympic Games, including the Beijing Winter Olympics, there is often a phenomenon in which the referee rules and punishes to dominate the ownership of medals, and the fastest skater may not necessarily win the medal.
The main controversy of short track speed skating is that its foul definition clause is vague and constantly being revised, which gives the referee a lot of discretion to decide the penalty. And in the event of a dispute, although multiple referees are theoretically allowed to participate in the discussion, in the end, the chief referee alone decides the result of the penalty. In addition, the short track speed skating competition scene is often very chaotic, often staged players to each other to trip, pull and bump people, fall out of the track, step on each other and even ice knife cut face and other thrilling scenes, is not conducive to the spread of sportsmanship, which also caused a lot of criticism.
Why does the short track speed skating competition often rely on the referee to control the medal ownership? The good point is that this is the comprehensive diversification of the rules of the game, and the ugly point is that the rules are chaotic and the four are different. A review of the evolutionary history of its projects may provide insight into its root causes. In short, short track speed skating belongs to the outlier of ice sports, is a hybrid and variety of European sports and North American sports, and eventually became the most suitable winter Olympic project for Northeast Asians, since the project became a winter Olympic event in 1992, South Korea is recognized as the first gold medal country in short track speed skating, and the mainland has gradually become on a par with it after the new century. But as far as the current controversy is concerned, the rules of this project still need to be continuously improved and evolved.
The root cause of the frequent controversy of short track speed skating: the rules are crossed between Europe and the United States, and the referee has a large space for discretion
In a sense, short-track speed skating can be said to be the sport with the most imperfect rules in the Winter Olympic Games, and the hybridization of European and American sports rules is one of the root causes of its imperfect rules and the diversification of the criteria for judging the results.
As we all know, in the three pillars of the contemporary Olympic Games, whether it is the International Olympic Committee or the various international sports federations, most of them are founded by Europeans and have the right to interpret the rules, which naturally includes many projects of the Winter Olympic Games. For example, the International Skating Union (hereinafter referred to as ISU), which is part of short track speed skating, was founded as early as 1892. Initially, the two major Ice Events of the Winter Olympics led by ISU were speed skating and figure skating, one was a pure racing event and the other was a pure difficulty skill project. Short-track speed skating originated in Canada in the 1880s and was gradually widely developed in Europe and the United States in the early 20th century. However, short-track speed skating has not been recognized by ISU for a long time, because short-track speed skating and is very different from the rules of speed skating promoted by ISU. Regardless of technical setting factors such as the length of the race distance, the core difference between the two is whether there is a physical confrontation between the players.
Speed skating is a typical European racing competition, the players in accordance with the prescribed line of gliding, parallel, do not interfere with each other, put an end to physical contact, maintain the elegance of European gentlemen, the competition is pure speed and endurance. Initially, in order to ensure that the players did not interfere with each other, the players chose to start at different starting points and determine the winner with the final timing. Short track speed skating reflects the North American sports philosophy, players can use the body slot to compete for the track to create more suspense, from which you can glimpse the shadow of rugby culture, that is, to reflect the physical confrontation. Focusing on physical confrontation, players constantly grab the track with various card slots in the race, which means that the players need to be physically strong and have certain confrontation skills, and at the same time, they must also strengthen the referee's on-site law enforcement effect. It is precisely because short track speed skating is not a pure racing sport, but also has some technical components when it comes to track card slots, so the rules and regulations are somewhat mixed from the beginning, which is why it was born in the 1880s but could not enter the ISU law eye for a long time.
Given that the Winter Olympics were also in the 1960s and 1970s, they were also in the predicament of no one bidding, so the IOC became more and more dependent on the United States. Around the same time that Lake Placid in the United States agreed to host the 1980 Winter Olympics, the ISU finally agreed to formally recognize the legal status of short track speed skating through coordination with the International Olympic Committee, and in 1975 established the Short Track Speed Skating Technical Committee to standardize short track speed skating and then hold the World Series, with the ultimate goal of promoting it to become an Olympic sport when the time is ripe.
As a result, ISU and North American Sports began to carry out a cross-breeding reform of the rules for the transformation of the project. Although ISU agrees that short-track speed skating can be overtaken, it believes that when competing for the leading position between each other, it is necessary to avoid rugby-style physical confrontation, but pay attention to more elegant transcendence techniques. In this way, after five years of specification reform and research, a version of the short track speed skating specification that can be called a hybrid of European and North American sports philosophy was finally released, and the ISU then decided to officially host the World Short Track Speed Skating Championships from 1981. Later, at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, the IOC and ISU listed short track speed skating as a winter Olympic performance event for the first time, followed by an official event at the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics.
Although from the ideal point of view of the specifications of short track speed skating, short track speed skating is both a competition for speed and a very test of the skill of surpassing the card position, which is a rare combination of racing and difficulty skills in ice sports, but from the perspective of the actual pro race, in the short distance narrow track, multiple players start synchronously and surpass each other at high speed in the narrow track, it is difficult to completely avoid physical contact or collision, and once a body collision occurs, it will cause the player to fall out of the bottom line or even cut the face of the ice knife. Moreover, because the players are sliding at high speed in a narrow track, it is difficult to define the responsibility for the collision in time for the slight contact between the two, and the referee cannot stop the game in time when the foul is found, and can only wait for the penalty after the end of the game, which is unfair to the player to a certain extent, so that the player is afraid of fouls and cannot fully exert the speed advantage, which will weaken the racing attribute of short track speed skating.
The adjudication power of short-track speed skating is also disputed. Generally speaking, the short track speed skating referee group consists of the chief referee (also known as the main referee), 2 auxiliary referees, and 1 video referee. In the event of a dispute and a foul that does not easily define responsibility, the four referees can exchange opinions, but the final decision is in the hands of the chief referee, who makes the decision alone. It is precisely because of the referee's independent ruling that many people question the unfairness of the judgment.
In the men's 1500m short track speed skating final at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, South Korea's Kim Dong-sung was convicted of a foul when he crossed the finish line first, and the gold medal was awarded to Apollo of the United States, the host of the second dash. However, Kim Dong-sung claimed that Apollo used exaggerated fake movements to deliberately create physical contact, and that he did not hinder Apollo. However, the referee found that Kim Dong-sung had a slight sentence to hinder the opponent's suspicions. The South Korean sports delegation protested unsuccessfully, and the South Korean people have been grumbling about it. The public spontaneously donated money to Kim Dong-sung, which made him earn an income comparable to the Olympic championship prize money, and in addition, the South Korean people believe that the referee and IOC took too much care of the host United States, and the home advantage of the American players was too obvious. South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo reported at the time that the "bullet-and-bullet protest email" caused the IOC homepage to be completely paralyzed, and some people also sent threatening emails to Apollo, and the FBI also opened an investigation.
Since then, the 2003 Short Track Speed Skating World Cup was held in South Korea, and the angry Korean people have been denouncing Apollo, threatening to let Apollo advocate the belated controversy, because of the surge of public opinion in South Korea, so that the entire American team, including Apollo, did not participate in that World Cup. Objectively speaking, the provisions for short track speed skating for fouls and the severity of fouls have long been unclear, and referees do have a lot of discretion. In the many competitions that followed, the physical contact was almost similar, and sometimes the referee could determine that it was a slight physical contact that did not hinder the overall situation, and sometimes the contact was a foul. What makes many people angry is that most of the time, the beneficiaries of the referee's judgment or neglect of the judgment are mostly the hosts, and the referee can still be free to judge.
In recent years, in order to improve the rules for defining fouls for short-track speed skating, ISU has also continuously strengthened the definition principles of fouls. At the same time, the position of high-speed cameras is increasing, but even so, controversy is still difficult to avoid. For example, in the mixed relay semifinals on February 5, the Chinese team passed the finish line in third place after Hungary and the United States, but then the American team was sent off, and the Chinese team finally reached the final and won the gold medal. At that time, the Chinese team did not carry out relay boosting, although it was an obvious foul, but the referee team directly chose to ignore it, believing that this had nothing to do with the overall situation. South Korean netizens have mocked the Chinese team's contactless relay as a "Bluetooth relay".
In the long run, the introduction of high-speed cameras can certainly be used to replay footage in short-track speed skating competitions, but it can sometimes be used as an aid for referees to find evidence to take care of their hosts and punish competitors. What level of physical contact is a foul is the most difficult rule for short track speed skaters to grasp at present. Since Sochi in 2014, players have been more worried about being punished by referees than they are about the technical advantage of speed, so they dare not go all out to play the speed advantage. As controversial short-track speed skating penalties continue to emerge, short-track speed skating may lose the original intention of the sport's fierce racing and become a disgusting collection of body hair fouls.
Who is the number one king of short-track speed skating in China and South Korea? The two countries are competing for talents and exchanging partners is the way out
Due to the imperfect rules of the short track speed skating event itself, there is more or less controversy in each Winter Olympics. However, since the new century, many controversies in various international competitions of short track speed skating have appeared between China and South Korea, which in turn has led to the continuous hatred and hatred between the Chinese and Japanese short track speed skating circles. The reason is that China and South Korea are the two traditional powers of short track speed skating, from the Asian Winter Games to the Winter Olympics and the Short Track Speed Skating World Cup, the two sides often need to confront each other head-on.
As we all know, short track speed skating is the most advantageous Winter Olympic event in mainland China. From its participation in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 1980 to the start of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the mainland won a total of 13 Winter Olympic gold medals, 10 of which came from short-track speed skating, and the breakthrough of zero gold medals at the Continental Winter Olympics was also broken in 2002 through short-track speed skating. Because the Chinese short track speed skating team is the "master of kings" in the mainland winter sports, many sports fans even compare it with the Chinese diving dream team in the Summer Olympic Games. But in a sense, this contrast is not particularly appropriate.
Looking at the world, China's diving dream team is the world's diving king, with stable achievements and strong dominance, which is unique in the world. But mainland short-track speed skating teams have not yet reached this level in the world, and South Korea is China's biggest opponent for short-track speed skating. Since short track speed skating became an official event of the Winter Olympics in 1992, before the Winter Olympics, South Korea has won a total of 24 gold medals in short track speed skating, while China has 10 in the same time period, and the gap between the two sides in the gold medal event is obvious. However, the Chinese short track speed skating team also thanks to south Korea's synchronous growth and technical exchanges in the process of rising.
As mentioned above, short track speed skating has become a part of North American sports before it is recognized by the ISU, and was introduced to Japan and South Korea through the United States, so the short track speed skating and the entire ice and snow sports in these two countries are deeper than the mainland, and short track speed skating is obviously a skill-oriented project that is very suitable for East Asians. With the ISU starting to host the Short Track Speed Skating World Cup in 1981, in 1982, the National Sports Commission, the predecessor of the State General Administration of Sport, officially decided to carry out short track speed skating in China and listed it as a national games event.
At that time, China's short-track speed skating had a strong demand for technical exchanges, and the development situation of short-track speed skating in neighboring South Korea was very good. However, the two countries did not establish diplomatic relations at that time, and South Korea wanted to develop and develop China's relations through "sports diplomacy", so it proposed to hold bilateral or trilateral winter sports competitions between China, Japan and South Korea. Considering the relationship between China and North Korea, the national sports committee at that time decided to promote the holding of the "Asian Winter Games", so there was the first Asian Winter Games held in Sapporo, Japan in 1986. Through the exchanges of the Asian Winter Games, China and South Korea have exchanged views and grown together in the field of short track speed skating.
With the official entry of short-track speed skating into the Winter Olympics in 1992, players from the two countries often confronted each other head-on, with China initially winning fewer and losing more. One of the most impressive was the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. In the men's short track speed skating 1000m final, Lee Jiajun, who is most likely to rush for gold, maintained the lead most of the time, pressing South Korea's Kim Dong-sung behind. But at the last moment, when Li Jiajun was ready to raise his arms to celebrate, Jin Dongsheng suddenly accelerated and rushed up, winning the gold with a slight advantage of 0.053 seconds. However, after entering the 21st century, China has caught up, especially at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Wang Meng led the women's team to defeat South Korea many times, and finally let the Koreans recognize that China has become a world power in short track speed skating.
However, in contrast, the strength of the men's and women's teams in South Korea's short track speed skating is balanced, while China's short track speed skating has long been yin and yang, until 2018, When Wu Dajing achieved a breakthrough of zero men's short track speed skating gold medals. The reason is that the entire country in South Korea is suitable for the development of ice and snow sports, and the long-term selection of ice and snow sports on the mainland is mainly Heilongjiang and Jilin, and even Liaoning is difficult to compare with the former two. In the future, as 300 million people continue to be on the ice and snow, China's short-track speed skating is expected to usher in a spurt period of material selection.
Although the short track speed skaters of the two countries have repeatedly quarreled because the competition is too fierce, and even upgraded to the so-called Sino-Korean feud, at present, it is the coaching team with The Korean coach as the core who helped the Chinese short track speed skating team achieve excellent results at the Beijing Winter Olympics, among which the Head Coach of the Chinese Short Track Speed Skating Team Kim Sun-tae, the technical coach An Hyun-so, and the equipment teacher Bian Yuyu are all well-known figures in the Korean short track speed skating industry. Of course, they led the Chinese team to defeat the South Korean team head-on, and also let the three of them suffer an Internet storm in South Korea.
However, looking at the long river of history, as Canada relives its former glory, the Netherlands, Hungary and other European upstarts rise, China and South Korea will still be the most leading power in the short track speed skating sport when they encounter intercontinental competition, and the competition and cooperation between the two countries in the field of short track speed skating will be the mainstream trend.
Note: The images used in this article are from the Internet