Silver medalist Su Yiming of Team China celebrates on the podium during the men's snowboarding slopestyle medal ceremony at Medal Plaza on February 7, 2022 in Zhangjiakou, China Photo: VCG

Chinese Olympic silver medalist Su Yiming's coach Yasuhiro Sato said in an open letter on Thursday night that they understand the difficulty of real-time scoring and called for the end of criticism over judges following scoring disputes as head judge has admitted a scoring error for Canadian snowboarder Max Parrot which cost Su winning gold.

Iztok Sumatic, head snowboard judge for the men's slopestyle final at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, compared the incident to the misjudgment of Diego Maradona's famous hand of God goal in a recent interview with top snowboarding magazine Whitelines. 

Sato realized that there might have been something wrong with the judging after the competition, he wrote in an open letter posted via Chinese twitter like Weibo on Thursday night. To be honest, he was disappointed but he realized immediately that this was part of the competition, and they would respect the results given by the judges, he wrote.

The most important is that Su has showed his best performance to the public and we are glad over it, Sato said. Many snowboarder lovers have a heated discussion over the judging result, but we don't care about it as the judging is really difficult, he wrote. Sato said they had a call with head judge Sumatic and expressed appreciation, Sumatic also thanked them.

Sato also posted a video with the public letter together on Weibo, showing Sato and Su hugged and shared their excitement and joy after winning the medal. Su also put this medal on Sato saying "that's ours." Some netizens commented behind the post and thanked Sato for coaching Su.

The culture of skiing is created by everyone, and the people who are active in this community are all families, Sato wrote, noting that people make mistakes sometimes, which is a common matter. He thanked gold medalist Max Parrot and Parrot's supporters.

The topic of Sato's calling for end of criticism also gained over 230 million clicks on Weibo. Just like Sato mentioned, sports lovers are families, "the competition is more about the process and the atmosphere, that is also why snow sports show people a relaxed atmosphere and athletes are also quite enjoyable," one netizen wrote.  

It's regrettable, but 17-year-old Su still has good future, another netizen wrote.

Global Times