In the men's steeplechase final for snowboarding at the Beijing Winter Olympics, 17-year-old Chinese teenager Su Yiming won the silver medal and Canadian athlete Palot won the gold medal. However, former snowboarders Amy Fowler and Ed Leife, who were commentators at the BBC, both pointed out that Paloth had a two-handed knee-to-knee movement when he was facing the camera with his back in the air, which was a move that should have been deducted a large point, but the referee did not notice.
In this regard, the ski magazine Whitelines interviewed the chief snowboard referee of the Winter Olympics, Istoc Sumatic. Sumatich explained that from the angle of the replay shot provided to them when the referee scored, it was impossible to see Paloth's mistake. The angle of the TV broadcast, they also saw it later, at this time it was impossible to change the score.
Sumatic revealed that after the match, the referees received a lot of verbal abuse on their mailboxes and mobile phones. Looking back on the situation when Parot was rated, Sumatić said: "We use what we see with our eyes as the basis for scoring. From the perspective provided to us by the playback footage, what we see is a grab plate and a perfectly executed action. This is one of them. The second thing to say is that because it's live, we have to make a decision in a few seconds, time is urging us, and we have to hit the score on the screen as soon as possible to make the game go smoothly. ”
Sumatic said that by the time the referees saw the same broadcast footage as the TV audience, they noticed Palot's mistake but it was too late: "By the time we saw the angle of the TV footage, it was too late, and the score had been entered into the system. ”
The atmosphere in the referee's room was not very good at this time, and Sumatich said: "Our reaction at that time was: What? It's an angle we haven't seen. I read in your magazine that one of your colleagues compared this situation to the Hand of God at the '86 World Cup maradona in Mexico. It's true – the referee didn't see it, the referee made the decision, and then it couldn't be changed. This is a real-time score based on the real-time picture, and the angle that can see the mistake is not given to us, and from our point of view, we think it is a technical action. ”
Sumatic concluded by saying that if the referees had seen Parot's mistake on the spot, his score would have been different. But there are too many environmental factors that affect the penalty, and overall, the quality of Paloth's entire set of actions is very high.