The coach of the Chinese snowboarder at the center of a Beijing scoring controversy has pleaded with fans to stop attacking the judges
Monday's men's slopestyle final was won by Canada's Max Parrot, while China's Su Yiming came in second.
Getty/Lu Lin
- The coach of Chinese snowboarder Su Yiming has asked fans to stop abusing the sport's judges.
- Su came second in the men's slopestyle, finishing behind Canada's Max Parrot in contentious circumstances.
- "People sometimes make mistakes, which is very natural," coach Yasuhiro Sato said.
The coach of the teenage Chinese snowboarder at the center of a scoring controversy at the Beijing Winter Olympics has asked fans to stop threatening and abusing the judges online.
The plea comes after a top judge acknowledged that a scoring error was made in the men's snowboard slopestyle final.
Monday's final was won by Canada's Max Parrot, whose second run received a high score of 90.96. China's Su Yiming came in second with a score of 88.70.
A day after the event, Iztok Sumatic, the head judge for the contest, acknowledged in an interview that he and his team had missed an error made by Parrot while performing a trick during his run. The mistake would have lessened Parrot's score if spotted.
Though he didn't confirm if seeing the error would have resulted in a different overall result, Sumatic said there "would be different scores."
In the wake of Sumatic's admission, fans of Su have flocked online to make threats towards the judges with some sharing violent memes involving the Beijing Olympics' cuddly panda mascot, Bing Dwen Dwen.
As online abuse of the judges spread, Su's coach, the Japanese snowboarding veteran Yasuhiro Sato, called for it to stop, while admitting his initial disappointment with Su's score.
"To be honest, I was disappointed when Su Yiming and I, after the awarding ceremony, knew about this and thought that we might have been in second place due to a misjudgment," Sato said in a statement shared to his Weibo account Thursday, per a translation from Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua.
"The culture of snowboarding is created by everyone together. All the people active in this sport are a family."
"People sometimes make mistakes, which is very natural, that's all. Please stop criticizing the judges and please extend warm congratulations to the gold medalist Max Parrot."
Screenshot/Weibo
Sato added that he and Su had spoken to Sumatic and added that the pair "understand grading sometimes can be really difficult."
He said that they "expressed gratitude to the judges while Sumatic also showed his gratitude to us."
Alongside the statement, Sato posted a video showing himself and Su hugging and sharing their excitement after winning the silver medal on Monday.
As a result of Sato's statement, the hashtag "Su Yiming coach calls for public to stop criticism" was the top trending topic on Weibo early Friday, according to a report from Bloomberg.
According to English language Chinese state media outlet Global Times, posts about Sato's call for calm gained over 230 million clicks on Weibo.