Snowboarding at the 2022 Winter Olympics – Men's slopestyle

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Men's slopestyle
at the XXIV Olympic Winter Games
Snowboarding pictogram.svg
Venue Genting Snow Park,
Zhangjiakou
Date6, 7 February
Competitors30 from 15 nations
Winning points90.96
Medalists
Gold medal icon.svg Max Parrot Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada
Silver medal icon.svg Su Yiming Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg  China
Bronze medal icon.svg Mark McMorris Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada
  2018
2026  

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]

Summary

The defending champion is Red Gerard. The 2018 silver medalist, Max Parrot, and the bronze medalist, Mark McMorris, qualified at the Olympics as well. At the 2021–22 FIS Snowboard World Cup, only three slopestyle events were held before the Olympics. Sébastien Toutant was leading the ranking, followed by Niek van der Velden and Su Yiming. Marcus Kleveland is the 2021 world champion, with Toutant and Rene Rinnekangas being the silver and bronze medalists, respectively. Dusty Henricksen is also the 2019 X-Games winner, ahead of Mons Røisland and Rinnekangas.

Qualification

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]

RankBibOrderNameCountryRun 1Run 2BestNotes
11628 Su Yiming Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg  China 86.8041.9386.80Q
234 Mark McMorris Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 62.7083.3083.30Q
3817 Sean FitzSimons Flag of the United States.svg  United States 78.7626.7578.76Q
42115 Ståle Sandbech Flag of Norway.svg  Norway 70.1178.6178.61Q
511 Redmond Gerard Flag of the United States.svg  United States 78.2043.9578.20Q
61726 Takeru Otsuka Flag of Japan.svg  Japan 32.9374.9374.93Q
72519 Emiliano Lauzi Flag of Italy.svg  Italy 71.7147.7671.71Q
842 Sébastien Toutant Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 23.6871.0671.06Q
9710 Mons Røisland Flag of Norway.svg  Norway 70.9641.4170.96Q
101113 Max Parrot Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 70.1136.6870.11Q
11621 Chris Corning Flag of the United States.svg  United States 48.4869.3069.30Q
12196 Kaito Hamada Flag of Japan.svg  Japan 56.0667.4567.45Q
13109 Rene Rinnekangas Flag of Finland.svg  Finland 67.1060.1067.10
1425 Marcus Kleveland Flag of Norway.svg  Norway 37.2864.8664.86
152718 Vlad Khadarin Russian Olympic Committee flag.png  ROC 64.7321.1564.73
16238 Noah Vicktor Flag of Germany.svg  Germany 16.6662.5662.56
1753 Dusty Henricksen Flag of the United States.svg  United States 37.4658.4658.46
181211 Tiarn Collins Flag of New Zealand.svg  New Zealand 58.3629.2158.36
192427 Ruki Tobita Flag of Japan.svg  Japan 29.2356.5856.58
202220 Nicolas Huber Flag of Switzerland.svg  Switzerland 50.4654.5854.58
212014 Hiroaki Kunitake Flag of Japan.svg  Japan 50.3651.4351.43
221312 Niek van der Velden Flag of the Netherlands.svg  Netherlands 26.5146.0346.03
23929 Darcy Sharpe Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 45.4625.1545.46
241825 Sven Thorgren Flag of Sweden.svg  Sweden 40.7334.7140.73
253022 Jonas Bösiger Flag of Switzerland.svg  Switzerland 40.1117.5840.11
261524 Matthew Cox Flag of Australia.svg  Australia 34.4639.9839.98
272816 Clemens Millauer Flag of Austria.svg  Austria 38.7132.0638.71
282623 Kalle Järvilehto Flag of Finland.svg  Finland 15.0628.7328.73
29147 Leon Vockensperger Flag of Germany.svg  Germany 25.1526.4126.41
302930 Niklas Mattsson Flag of Sweden.svg  Sweden 24.1820.5524.18

Final

[7]

RankBibOrderNameCountryRun 1Run 2Run 3Best
Gold medal icon.svg113 Max Parrot Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 79.8690.9636.5690.96
Silver medal icon.svg1612 Su Yiming Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg  China 78.3888.7066.5888.70
Bronze medal icon.svg311 Mark McMorris Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 76.9880.8588.5388.53
418 Redmond Gerard Flag of the United States.svg  United States 83.2571.8628.6583.25
5256 Emiliano Lauzi Flag of Italy.svg  Italy 80.0127.4839.4880.01
662 Chris Corning Flag of the United States.svg  United States 31.5820.7865.1165.11
774 Mons Røisland Flag of Norway.svg  Norway 29.0163.3352.5363.33
8191 Kaito Hamada Flag of Japan.svg  Japan 25.9015.9159.3659.36
945 Sébastien Toutant Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 52.6330.4054.0054.00
10177 Takeru Otsuka Flag of Japan.svg  Japan 52.7550.5852.8052.80
11219 Ståle Sandbech Flag of Norway.svg  Norway 29.0527.4339.6639.66
12810 Sean FitzSimons Flag of the United States.svg  United States 29.4829.6126.6129.61

Concerns and controversies

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]

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References

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