"I implore you not to criticize the judges for this men's steeplechase final and to thank gold medalist MAX Parrot, his family and all those who supported him." Last night, Su Yiming coach Yasuhiro Sato posted an open letter on social platforms, which reads.
On February 7, the men's steeplechase of snowboarding at the Beijing Winter Olympics decided the gold medal. The 17-year-old Chinese teenager Su Yiming won the silver medal with 88.70 points and a stable performance in the second high jump. It has created the best result in history for the Chinese snowboard team and achieved a breakthrough of zero medals in the project.
Controversy is rife, why is the super difficult 1880 action not enough to make Su Yiming win the championship?
In this final, the silver medalist of the last Winter Olympics event, Max Parlot, successfully completed the game with a difficult move, scoring 90.96 points. For the contestants behind, this means that if they want to hit the podium, they can only come up with higher difficulty, innovative ideas and more perfect performance.
Su Yiming then chose the complete set of actions with the highest difficulty on the spot, "1440+1620+1880", and landed steadily after completion. The 1880 movement of the four-sided axis used in the last jump was the most difficult, and only one person had completed it in the previous competition. Despite showing super difficulty in the obstacle zone, the final score was fixed at 88.70 points, ranking second.
If this summit duel is objectively evaluated, the performance of the two top athletes is indistinguishable. Canadian star Max Paloth is more difficult in the props area; and Su Yiming's "deflection shaft rotation 1880" jumped in the obstacle area is also strongly convincing and cannot be directly conclusive.
According to the individual rules of snowboard slope obstacle courses formulated by the International Snow Federation (FIS), each player has three rounds of appearances, and the highest score is calculated, and 6 referees from different countries are scored according to the division of the skating route. In the official record table released after the Beijing Winter Olympics, the referee from Canada scored a low score for Su Yiming's prop area, and many netizens questioned the suspicion of the Canadian referee on the spot.
Recreating the storm, the leader of the referee group admitted to scoring mistakes
There is no doubt that Su Yiming's jump has been recognized by senior snowboard "enthusiasts" at home and abroad, who have raised the same questions on different social platforms. During the broadcast of the event, the BBC commentators also believed that the championship of the project should belong to the Chinese team.
As discussions continued to ferment among netizens, the referee of the game, IztokSumatic, was interviewed by Whitelines (a well-known foreign snowboard information website) on the evening of February 8.
IztokSumatic first revealed in the interview that he had encountered a bad situation in recent days, and the use of malicious comments on his mailbox and other contact platforms caused a lot of trouble in his life; secondly, he admitted in his response that the referee team had made a scoring error, because there was no picture of Marx Palotte's mistake found in the referee real-time playback system. When found in the television footage, the grade has been submitted and cannot be modified.
Iztok Sumatic admits that if Marx Paloth's mistakes were found during the real-time scoring process, the results would be different, but then he also affirmed the wonderful performance he brought.
Previously, veneer enthusiasts found in the TELEVISION broadcast footage that Canada's Max Parlot's mistake - did not make a grab action when the performance of the props area was connected, according to the rules, the appearance of this mistake will affect the presentation of the final result.
After the announcement, the incident was increasingly characterized as a "malicious operation" rather than a "work error", and the response of the chief magistrate pushed the controversy and anger to the peak.
Ingeniously resolved, Su Yiming and the coaching team responded atmospherically
"We fully understand the difficulties that may arise during the real-time scoring process of the referees and thank the referees for their efforts in the game. Su Yiming's performance at the Beijing Winter Olympics has achieved its goal, and this achievement will also be the driving force for Su Yiming's continued progress. Su Yiming's coach Yasuhiro Sato elaborated in an open letter.
An open letter released by Su Yiming's coach Yasuhiro Sato.
In the post-match interview that day, Su Yiming had already expressed his opinion: "I have completed the actions I want to complete, and I have not paid special attention to the score of each referee, but I am very happy to get this score." ”
In categories such as snowboarding, the difference in points due to subjective scoring is a common occurrence on the field. The identification and judgment of the technical difficulty of such projects is relatively complex, which is difficult for ski enthusiasts who have just entered the pit; in addition, there are differences between the content presented during the TV broadcast and the playback of the real-time scoring system of the referee seat, and different camera angles often bring different experiences to the perception of the competition.
At the end of Yasuhiro Sato's open letter, he appealed to everyone to pay attention to Su Yiming's next game. The men's snowboard jumping competition will be held on February 14, and Su Yiming has also stood on the highest podium in the previous World Cup event. In the face of the controversy over the award of penalties on the field, you may wish to respect the views of the athletes and coaching team concerned, and cheer for the athletes in the next competition!