Su's coach calls on public to stop criticizing judges of men's snowboard slopestyle final

CHONGLI, Zhangjiakou, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- Beijing 2022 men's snowboard slopestyle silver medalist Su Yiming's coach Sato Yasuhiro said in an open letter on his social media on Thursday that he and Su understand the difficulty of real-time scoring and call on the public to stop criticizing the judges.

Iztok Sumatic, head judge of the men's snowboard slopestyle final, told the snowboarding professional website Whitelines that "it would be different scores" if the judges had seen champion Max Parrot miss a grab from the camera angle provided to them.

In the open letter, Yasuhiro said he realized there might have been problems in the process of scoring after the final.

"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," he said. "However, I immediately thought that this is part of the game, and respect the score given by the judges."

The coach regarded the result as a motivation for Su to continue training harder for the future. "Above all, we aimed to show everyone the best performance of Su Yiming and we are very happy with that," he said.

According to Yasuhiro, he and Su called Sumatic after doubts of snowboarding professionals and fans flooded in on social media about the final score.

In the phone call, Yasuhiro and Su told Sumatic they "understand grading sometimes can be really difficult, and expressed gratitude to the judges while Sumatic also showed his gratitude to us."

"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," Yasuhiro noted.