Last night I was watching the final speed skating competitions of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and, though I normally stay away from bleeding red, white, and blue with my cowboy hat and guns blazing, America got screwed!
During the last lap of the 500-meter finals, Apolo Anton Ohno was making a pass on Canadian Francois-Louis Tremblay, and as most skaters do for cushoning and awareness, placed his right hand on the side of Tremblay as they entered the final turn.
Milliseconds following the legal contact between the two skaters, Tremblay lost his footing and crashed into the padded wall, leaving Ohno in third place.
Milliseconds after this, Korea's Sung Si-Bak loses his footing and crashes after his hand catches onto leader Charles Hamelin's right skate as they near the finish line. Hamelin would cross the finish line first doing a nice little dance to stay on his feet, with Ohno crossing the line in second place.
As in several past speed skating finals in this olympic games and previous ones, this type of incident would be reviewed but ultimately determined to be a competitive final charge for the finish line, with the 1-2-3 finish being Hamelin, Ohno, and Si-Bak.
Oh but wait- we'll go ahead and leave it up to the Canadian judge to determine whether one of his country's 2 skaters in the competition is eliminated or gets bronze. Hmmm....I wonder what he'll decide.
Meanwhile, earlier in the week a similar incident occured in which a skater was pushed even harder on a final lap and was pardoned, and I seem to remember it being a Canadian skater. I might be wrong though, so don't take that for Gospel truth.
But regardless of comparing it to any other race or skater from any country and looking at this completely from the perspective of this particular race, there is no way a Canadian line judge should be allowed to make the call when 2 Canadian skaters are in the event, one who is involved in the incident, and the decision being made could hand one of them a medal or leave them empty-handed. It is, needless to say, a conflict of interest.
Two things need to be said for this incident:
1) There should be alternate line judges for events like this so there is always a way to avoid conflicts of interest or suspicions of country favoritism.
2) The olympic rules for speed-skating need to be more consistant. Either contact should be legal, or all forms of contact should be illegal. Leaving these calls up to interpretation will always leave room for error and will never be 100% fair.
And for the record, there's a lot of buzz going around today about how Ohno's post-race interview was somehow unclassy or unprofessional, and I just want to tell the haters that they need to re-watch his interview. He was very respectful, very classy, and very humble about the decision made. When he was pushed to answer whether he thought the line judge's call was wrong and/or biased, he respectfully shared his opinion but held the olympic pride perfectly in tact. I give the guy credit. If it had been me, I may have taken a skate to the line-judges face after a call like the one made in this instance.
Oh, Canada, the line judges stand on guard for thee. I love your country, I love you athletes, but your judges kind of suck. Oh well, we'll settle this in the hockey finals!
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