- Judging issues have been a hot topic of conversation in snowboarding events at the
Winter Olympics . - 2018 gold medalist Red Gerard said that errors in the judging in Beijing have been "life-changing."
2018 Olympic gold medalist American snowboarder Red Gerard has criticized the quality of the judges at the Beijing Winter Olympics after they admitted to making a scoring error in an event in which he finished fourth.
Gerard finished just outside the medals in the men's snowboard slopestyle final last week, with Canadian Mark McMorris winning bronze and China's Su Yiming claiming silver. Canada's Max Parrot took home gold.
After the event, the head judge Iztok Sumatic said he and his team had missed an error by Parrot in his run that would have resulted in the scores being "different."
Sumatic did not say whether the change in scores would have affected the final standings.
"It's heartbreaking," Gerard said Monday, according to Associated Press. "There's nothing they can do after they put the scores in to change it.
"You're talking about, this is life-changing for some people, you know?"
Gerard would unlikely have benefitted had the judges noticed Parrot's mistake — which saw him miss a grab — having finished with a score of 83.25, some five points behind third place, and seven behind Parrot's winning score. Parrot's error would likely have cost him a maximum of three points, some pundits said.
Aside from the admitted error in the slopestyle final, there have also been questionable judging calls made in other snowboarding events at the games.
In the men's halfpipe event, many thought Ayumu Hirano of Japan was under-scored on his second run after performing a trick never-before-seen in a complete run. NBC commentator Todd Richards said the judges had "grenaded all of their credibility" by scoring Hirano a 91.75.
The criticism mostly vanished, however, after he produced the same trick on his third run and won gold with a near perfect score of 96.
"I never cared about any of this, and all of a sudden, I find myself caring," said Gerard, who became a sensation in Pyeongchang when he won gold after oversleeping.
"It's a bummer. It's just like, this has been brought to my eye over the last month-ish that we've been here. It's just been hard on everyone."
In the men's slopestyle final, Parrot's error was picked up by multiple cameras and shared on social media, but was not seen by the judges because they weren't given a replay of the incident.
McMorris, who took slopestyle bronze, told the AP that snowboarding needs to provide judges with better access to slow-motion replays to ease the pressure to make decisions quickly on live television broadcasts.
"Until we have people caring about having proper cameramen on the scene, proper feeds displayed for the judges, proper training and accountability for the judges, as well, it's going to be an uphill battle to get proper judging," McMorris said.