Winter Olympics: snowboard judge admits ‘Maradona, Hand of God’ error cost Su Yiming slopestyle gold
- Iztok Sumatic tells ‘snowboard bible’ Whitelines if judges had seen gold winner Max Parrot’s double-knee grab, he would have received a different score
- Su Yiming fans react with a mixture of anger and resignation, saying ‘it’s too late’ or urging the rider to file a complaint
Fans of Chinese teen snowboard sensation Su Yiming expressed feelings of anger and resignation after the chief judge at the Beijing Winter Olympics admitted a “Maradona, Hand of God” mistake gave slopestyle gold medal winner Max Parrot a higher score than he deserved.
Iztok Sumatic told Whitelines.com, the online “snowboard bible”, that judges failed to pick up a mistake made by Canadian Parrot on his way to scoring 90.96 on his second run on Monday. It was enough to give him the gold over 17-year-old former child actor Su, who also turned in a sizzling second run for his 88.70.
Canadian Mark McMorris finished third. The story on Weibo had more than 240 million views, with fans either saying “it’s too late to do anything now”, or urging Su to file a complaint.
Replays of Parrot’s run showed a double-knee grab on the off-axis “twisted sister” kicker halfway down the course, which should have affected his score. And Sumatic admitted this was the case in an interview with Whitelines’ Tristan Kennedy, saying the judges were not given the camera angles seen by viewers.
“I read an article by one of your colleagues on Whitelines where he compared it to Maradona scoring the Hand of God goal in Mexico ’86,” Sumatic said. “It was like that. The referee hadn’t seen it, but he made a decision, and you can’t change it afterwards. It’s live scoring – we have to score from the live feeds. That was the angle we were given, and it felt like a legit trick from that point of view.
“It would be different scores yes,” Sumatic said when asked if the score would have been different had judges seen the mistake. “But there are so many factors. All I can say, in Max’s defence, regarding this specific run, is that it was still an insane run. He killed it, especially on the rails.”
Sumatic said the competition had six section judges, two per feature, and three overall impression judges. He said all judges were highly experienced in their field.
