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South Korea Disqualified for Incidental Contact During Short Track Roller Derby Relay

Feb 25, 2010, 3:00 PM UTC

The Short Track Speed Skating has been one of the most exciting disciplines at the Winter Olympics, and part of the reason is because there could be a crazy pass or a disastrous crash at any point in the race. It really is the roller derby of Olympic Sports (and yes, I think they should have roller derby in the Summer Games).â†µ

â†µIn last night's Women's Short Track Relay final, the South Korean team made a spectacular pass with only a few laps to go, holding off rival China to win the gold. Or so they thought. After a lengthy review of the tape – this made the NFL review process seem streamlined by comparison – officials deemed that a small bump during the pass had knocked the Chinese skater off her line, causing a disqualification of South Korea and awarding the gold medal to China. What's more, the Canadian team that had finished in third moved up to win the silver medal and the U.S. team that finished half a lap behind the field, was handed the bronze. Per the AP:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥The South Koreans crossed the finish line first, but after several minutes of discussion among the referees, they were disqualified for clicking skates with China just after an exchange with five laps to go.â†µâ‡¥â†µâ‡¥“Blade contact is no reason for a DQ,” said South Korea women’s coach Choi Kwang-bok, who pounded angrily on the rinkside pads when informed of the DQ. “I don’t understand why they did that.”â†µâ‡¥

â†µâ†µWhat I don’t understand is how the South Korean team was booted for what looked to be a stellar pass and incidental contact – watching the replay you could make the case that the Chinese skater got herself tangled up during the pass – but the Canadian team wasn’t disqualified for blocking the United States on an early exchange that caused the half-lap disparity. â†µâ†µTo the video tape (and by video tape, I obviously mean screen grabs of the video tape that we’re not able to embed!)â†µ

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â†µâ†µNow, I clearly don’t know what I’m talking about with the rules of this sport, but it just seems incredibly odd to the layperson watching at home that a team can get disqualified for a minor touch in a sport where earlier in the night we saw a man’s face leaning against another man’s backside. A good pass and incidental contact gets you bounced, but a flat-out block on a push exchange doesn’t get so much as a comment from the announcers. To be fair, the NBC crew seemed rather befuddled as to how the U.S. team got that far behind, so clearly they didn’t see the exchange when it happened, or that kind of block is rather commonplace in the sport. Here we go:â†µ

â†µâ†µBelow, the four teams prepare for an early exchange.â†µ

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â†µâ†µCanada takes the turn sharply to move ahead of South Korea, thereby cutting off the United States.â†µ

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â†µâ†µClearly, the skater who completed her laps – and is therefore no longer the active skater – blocked the United States team, leading the U.S. skater to physically push her out of the way.â†µ

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â†µâ†µThere was no DQ there, and no mention of the situation, but it cost the United States any chance at a medal...well, until this:â†µ

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â†µâ†µThat looked like a clean exchange above, and it even looks like South Korea had already made the move into first. Around the corner, that’s verified.â†µ

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â†µâ†µYou can see right there, and below, that the two competitors accidentally bump, and it looks that the South Korean’s skate may have touched the Chinese skate (below is the same as the lead photo in this story):â†µ

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â†µâ†µHere you can see that the contact knocked the Chinese skater off her line.â†µ

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â†µâ†µThe contact seemed incidental, the race ended and the South Koreans did their victory lap. â†µ

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â†µâ†µWhat’s the Chinese word for “despondent”? â†µ

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â†µâ†µNow, we go to the video tape, which I assumed at the time was to see if Canada should be booted for blocking the United States. â†µ

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â†µâ†µAfter more deliberation, two old white guys decide the fate of this race:â†µ

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â†µâ†µAll this talk did not make the South Koreans too excited.â†µ

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â†µâ†µOne of the officials had the uneviable task of telling the South Korean coach his team was DQ’d.â†µ

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â†µThat made the Chinese team very happy.â†µ

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â†µâ†µThe South Koreans...not so much.â†µ

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â†µOh, and to compound it all, the Chinese team broke the World Record, which means that not only would South Korea have won the gold, they’d have been in the record books too. But they were eliminated for, again, an incidental bump. The team that clearly blocked another on purpose...they got the silver.
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â†µAgain, I’m not saying what the Canadians did was cheating, or worthy of a disqualification. But it doesn’t seem fair that you can do what they did, but you can’t accidentally click skates with an opponent while making a gold-medal pass.
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â†µCome to think of it, this kind of thing doesn’t happen in roller derby.â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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