Controversy erupts after photo appears to show wrong Olympian awarded win
Two maxims were stretched to their ultimate limit at the Olympics on Friday.
One is “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
The other is “pictures don’t lie, seeing is believing.”
Well, when the pictures award a victory to someone who appears to have lost a race by a hundredth of a second …
Woah, this photo finish tells me that #Slovenia Zan Kosir (far lane) got screwed!! They gave the win to the #korean athlete Lee Sangho in the near lane. #Pyeongyang2018 #Olympics2018 #Snowboarding #snowboarder #olympics pic.twitter.com/nBn5SeQ4oJ
— Shawn Pooley (@ShawnPooley) February 24, 2018
That picture is from the parallel giant slalom snowboarding event, where Lee Sang-Ho of South Korea, in the foreground, was awarded the win over Zan Kosir of Slovenia, in the background.
Which doesn’t seem to line up with what the picture actually depicts: Lee has his hand and his board short of the red line, while Kosir’s hand and a significant amount of the front of his board are on or over the line.
In turn, this means that the decision made upon reviewing the photo seems to be precisely the opposite of what the photographic evidence clearly shows as the correct decision that should’ve been made, in which Kosir, not Lee, is the winner of the event.
Indeed, the entire effect is less “seeing is believing” and more Chico Marx saying in “Duck Soup,” “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
Kosir was, understandably, furious; he ended up in the bronze medal race, where at least he got a spot on the podium after winning that dash down the course.
https://twitter.com/lbjonz/status/967282608160714752
But he goes home to his mountainous fatherland with the bitter taste in his mouth, wondering if he could’ve beaten Nevin Galmarini of Switzerland, who won the gold medal after beating out Lee, who had to settle for silver. No doubt Kosir thinks he should’ve heard “Zdravljica” (“A Toast”), the Slovenian national anthem.
Now, it’s possible that still shot is an optical illusion brought on by the angle at which the photo was taken.
But if that’s the case, why is Kosir’s board on the red line when Lee’s board is very clearly short of the line?
Watching Olympics and just saw #kosir #lee #Snowboard Kosir got completely screwed and announcers for NBC were complicit. Obvious win by Kosir. pic.twitter.com/seR3x7FeWk
— Banks Fine Art (@BanksFineArt) February 24, 2018
Unless you believe that Lee’s body angle is such that his hand is farther forward than the guy behind him and that it’s a bit like looking at the speedometer of a car from the point of view of the passenger seat, thinking the car is going faster or slower than it is, the board seems to tell the story.
Then again, the “winner” was from the host nation, the same country where the referees gave the South Korean team every call at the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament, which got the Koreans to a fourth-place finish but not before the Americans, Italians and Spaniards all had cause to gripe at playing 11-on-14.
Could that same home cooking have been in effect here?
Maybe someone should ask the International Olympic Committee, because like a New York City subway tunnel, it’s hard not to smell a rat.
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