Snowboarders attack ‘life-changing’ judging errors at Winter Olympics

Red Gerard, the happy-go-lucky American snowboarder who famously overslept the morning he won gold in Pyeongchang, never thought he’d be the one slamming the scoring at an Olympic competition.

“I never cared about any of this, and all of a sudden, I find myself caring,” the 21-year-old said. “It’s a bummer. It’s just like, this has been brought to my eye over the last month-ish that we’ve been here. It’s just been hard on everyone.”

Olympic judging at snowboarding events on slopestyle, in the halfpipe and now at big air has come under fire from the boarders themselves, who say they are fed up with inconsistent and, at times, blatantly incorrect scoring with so much on the line.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Gerard said Monday. “There’s nothing they can do after they put the scores in to change it. ... You’re talking about, this is life-changing for some people, you know?”

The most egregious error came at slopestyle last week, when gold medalist Max Parrot of Canada was credited with a full grab of his board on the first jump even though broadcast replays showed him holding his knee. Parrot has since acknowledged the error, which prompted Canadian teammate and bronze medalist Mark McMorris to claim that he should have earned gold instead. Gerard was fourth.

In the halfpipe, many thought gold medalist Ayumu Hirano of Japan was bizarrely underjudged on his second run, which included a triple cork – a trick that had never been performed as part of a complete run until then. That controversy was mostly squelched when Hirano went even bigger with the same set of tricks in Round 3 and won the contest.

Gerard said the judges erred again at qualifying for big air on Monday. He complained that his switch backside 1620 was scored