Weibo fans incensed over a Chinese snowboarder's loss are now threatening the judges.Su Yiming , 17, would have won a gold medal if not for a judging error, a chief judge admitted.
Social media users in China have adopted Bing Dwen Dwen, the
Memes of the wide-eyed stuffed bear in a bobsled have emerged on social media platform Weibo, captioned with a pun that translates to "I'll ram you to death" and the hashtag #CanadaReferee.
Variations of the meme were frequently posted in discussions of 17-year-old Su's second-place finish in the men's slopestyle final on Monday. Max Parrot, the Canadian snowboarder who clinched gold, scored 90.96 while Su trailed at 88.70.
The Weibo outrage stems from the judges' failure to spot Parrot making an error during his run by grabbing his knee instead of his board. The mistake would have cost him three points, placing him below Su on the scoreboard, observed BBC commentator Ed Leigh, The South China Morning Post reported.
Chief snowboarding judge Iztok Sumatic admitted on Tuesday that judges had made an error in the scoring and that Su should have won the gold medal, sparking further uproar on Weibo. According to the platform, posts about Su's loss have accumulated more than 130 million views.
Adding to the tension, some Weibo users accused one of the judges, a Canadian, of being biased and deliberately giving Parrot high scores while snubbing Su.
Other memes of Bing Dwen Dwen, edited from promotional photos, include the cheerful bear threatening to run the judge over with a luge, smacking them with a hockey stick, and shooting them with a biathlon rifle.
Sumatic said in an interview with White Lines magazine that it's now too late for the judges to change their decision from Monday. However, some Weibo users have insisted that the judges rectify their mistake. A Global Times post on Weibo suggesting such a move has received 22,000 likes.
"When football games now know the need to introduce video referee technology to avoid such mistakes, why can't snowboarding make corrections to wrong calls?" the state-sponsored tabloid said on its official account. "If you do something wrong, you should correct it, that's something that all children know."
In the meantime, Su's coach, Japanese snowboarding veteran Yasuhiro Sato, has urged Chinese fans to stop attacking the judges and said he would respect the judging panel's decision. Judging snowboarding competitions in real-time is "sometimes really difficult," Sato wrote on Weibo.
"I hope everyone will refrain from criticizing the judges for the judging of this slopestyle final. And I would like to express my gratitude to Max Parrot, the gold medalist, his family, and all the people who support him," Sato said.
The coach said he and Su called Sumatic to thank him and added that they held no ill-will towards the judges.
"The culture of snowboarding is something that everyone creates," he added. "Everyone in this community is a family. Sometimes humans make mistakes."
The International Olympic Committee did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on this story.