Winter Olympics - Max Parrot wins controversial slopestyle gold – What exactly happened in the event?
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Published 07/02/2022 at 16:36 GMT
The gold medal won by Max Parrot is one of the best stories of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games but there was a touch of controversy about his win. In this explainer we, with the help of Billy Morgan, will break down everything you need to know about the situation. Watch every moment of Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on discovery+
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On Monday morning Canadian star Max Parrot won slopestyle gold, a little over three years after a diagnosis of Hodgkin lymphoma.
However there was controversy after the event as replays showed Parrot had missed a grab during his routine.
Plenty on social media vented their frustration that was missed, with many believing that had it been scored “correctly” it might have resulted in a different winner.
There’s a lot to unpack here so let’s try and break it down.
What exactly did Parrot miss?
So during the routine one of Parrot’s move calls for him to grab the board while he’s rotating through the air. However he missed the board and still shots showed that his hand was an inch or so away from the board.
So why wasn’t he marked down?
Okay so this is really important. Snowboarding is not like say, figure skating. In figure skating there is scoring happening during the routine and then after the routine the judges get the chance to go back and check they scored everything correctly.
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That is not the case in snowboarding. The judges have 20-30 seconds max at the end of run and as such by the time they get to see replays the scores have already been made official. This is a flaw within the set-up of snowboarding and something the governing bodies really need to look at.
Expert analysis – Would it have made a difference?
So the real question is whether or not the change in judgement would have actually impacted the overall score.
As far as former Team GB Olympic snowboarder Billy Morgan is concerned, the different would not have been meaningful.
“I think it might have made a bit of difference to the score but in the end the rankings wouldn’t have been different the score is just there to rank people in order and I don’t think it would have changed the order in the end.”
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Ed Leigh commentating for BBC Sport felt differently.
"This is a mistake on the judges' part," said Leigh.
"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 that, 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."
Parrot’s win still an ‘absolutely incredible’ story
While speaking with Radzi Chinyanganya Morgan was full of praise for the incredible recovery that Parrot had made.
“That’s absolutely incredible having to go through all of that and then getting to the top,” Morgan said.
Being a top-level snowboarder again is one thing but then there’s jumping onto the world stage and winning an Olympic gold medal. It’s insane!
“The one small thing I mentioned is the missed grab on his Cab 16 triple cork was the one small flaw in his run. But he completed that with another backside 14 and coming off to finish with frontside 16 triple cork, he landed it perfectly. You can see how much control he is in coming in to land there and that’s the control he showed throughout his run.”
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