The men's slopestyle competition in snowboarding at the 2022 Winter Olympics was held on 6 February (qualification) and 7 February (final), at the Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou.[1]Max Parrot of Canada became the Olympic champion. Su Yiming of China won the silver medal, whereas Mark McMorris of Canada replicated his success at the 2014 and 2018 Olympics by winning the bronze. For Parrot this is the first Olympic gold, and for Su the first Olympic medal. The scoring in the finals was mired in controversy after the judges admitted to missing a "glaring error" by Parrot that some speculate would have given Su Yiming the gold medal.[2] The head snowboarding judge, Iztok Sumatic, later stated in an interview that the final scores was wrong due to the judging error, and that Su should have won the gold instead. However, because neither McMorris nor Su filed an official appeal, it had meant that the flawed results will not be changed.[3][4]
A total of 30 snowboarders qualified to compete at the games. For an athlete to compete they must have a minimum of 50.00 FIS points in Big Air or Slopestyle on the FIS Points List on January 17, 2022, and a top 30 finish in a World Cup event in Big Air or slopestyle or at the FIS Snowboard World Championships 2021. A country could enter a maximum of four athletes into the event.[5]
Results
Qualification
Q — Qualified for the Final
The top 12 athletes in the qualifiers advanced to the Final.[6]
The medal results stirred controversy when Canada's Max Parrot, during his gold winning performance, grabbed his knee instead of the board. Replays showed him "failing to grab his board and instead clutching around his lower leg, meaning that the maneuver was incomplete and should have been marked down."[2] Despite this, the run was scored as a 90.96. In a later interview with snowboarding website Whitelines, the head Olympic snowboard judge Iztok Sumatik explained that they were "being pushed to be on time" and that the judges did not get a replay of the trick.[8] In the angle provided to the judges, the trick had looked clean.
Fans on social media had also complained that Su was "robbed" of the gold with inexplicable low-scoring by the judges even after Su had successfully completed both his first and second runs that included the first-ever completion of the 1800 trick in competition.[9][10][11][3]
During the coverage of the event, TV commentators were quick to notice the error in Parrot's gold medal run. Before the score was announced, Australian Channel 7 commentators Mitch Tomlinson and Ryan Tiene noticed that Parrot had missed grabbing his board twice and likely grabbed his leg to prevent getting injured. They said "unfortunately for Max, he's going to have points deducted."[2] However, when the score came out, they realized that the judges had missed the error and said "that's not good for snowboarding."[2]
BBC commentator Ed Leigh pointed out that the knee grab was a "cardinal sin". In the BBC broadcast, Leigh said, "Something like that should have cost Parrot two or three points... I looked at the sector scores afterwards - he got 9.35 out of 10. If they had spotted [the error], it would have been a six or a 6.5. There were three points between bronze and gold - that would have totally upended the podium."[12][13] He went on to say that "there is a glaring judging error putting Max Parrot in gold" and that giving him the gold would be "controversial."[12][2] Online, people dubbed this knee-gate, and Whitelines said that it "will go down in history a la Diego Maradona’s Hand Of God as one of the worst calls we’ll see in sport."[14]
Moreover, bronze medalist Mark McMorris felt he had the best run of the day, and should have been the gold medalist, "but knowing that I kind of had the run of the day and one of the best rounds of my life and the whole industry knows what happened". Parrot, acknowledged the error and still felt like he deserved the gold medal, "But in the end, it's a judged sport and the fact is I had the most technical run of the day on pretty much every feature". Lead judge for the event, Iztok Sumatic said, "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." Ultimately the blame lied with the organiziers, who failed to provide multiple angles of the event.[3] Parrot reviewed the runs by the three medalists and, "he spotted three "little mistakes" during McMorris' turn, and also noted a few errors by Su", while Parrot, "didn't have any mistakes on five of the six features, and on the one jump, I had a bigger mistake".[15]
