'Told me I would be DQ'd' – Julia Marino upset as IOC make her scribble out snowboard logo at Winter Olympics

Team USA snowboarder Julia Marino has hit out at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after they demanded she covered up the logo on her board at Beijing 2022. Marino withdrew from the big air competition at the eleventh hour after taking a marker pen to her Prada-branded board and feeling “unstable and unsteady”. Ad/> Bizarrely, the 24-year-old had won slopestyle silver on the same board earlier in the Games.

/> Beijing 2022Katie Ormerod vows to bounce back from Beijing disappointment and eyes 2026 Olympic return8 HOURS AGO The IOC informed Marino that her board logo violated Rule 40, which controls how athletes can benefit from commercial activities at an Olympics, and said she must remove the branding or use a different board. «For everyone asking, the night before the big air, the IOC told me they no longer approved my board even though they approved it for slope,» Marino wrote on her Instagram story on Monday, with her post accompanied by a picture of her board logo scribbled over in red. «They told me I would be disqualified if I didn’t cover the logo and obligated me to literally draw on the base of my board with a sharpie.» /> Marino covered the logo with a marker pen but did not feel steady on the modified board.

She was already nursing a tailbone injury after a crash in practice before the IOC’s late request. «For those who don't know, the base of the board is important for your speed and not meant to have anything on it but wax, having marker and other things on the bottom basically defeats the purpose,» she said. «I had no speed for the jump and wasn’t able to clear it several times.