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Controversy on penalty-filled Olympic 3,000 relay in short track

Earlier this week, both Canada and China were penalized in the women’s 3,000 speed skating relay event, stirring up social media anger and controversy.
Kacy Wu

Earlier this week, both Canada and China were penalized in the women’s 3,000 speed skating relay event, stirring up social media anger and controversy.

Since Canada and China were penalized, South Korea won the gold metal and Italy came in second place. The Netherlands, who had not qualified for this final, took the bronze.

During the race, a few skaters fell, leading to chaos on the track.  The decision then came out saying Canada and China were penalized for disrupting the game players.

Canadian skater Marianne St-Gelais wasn’t sure why Canada was penalized. She told the Global News, "the crash (occurred when) the Korean fell. They had an exchange on the side and she fell, so (Valerie Maltais) tried to avoid it, but she couldn’t, so that’s why she fell. So we thought she might be called in that because she wasn’t stable at all."

Chinese skater Zhou Yang said she didn’t understand why China got a penalty either. She said "I think there was no problem with what we did. Other than we think it’s not fair, there’s really nothing else we can say about (the penalty)."

The Chinese team then appealed to the International Skating Union after the decision, but ISU declined the appeal saying because China failed to appeal within 30 minutes after the game ended. However, the Chinese speed skating coach, Li Yan said, "because the referees were still in a meeting, the appeals had not been submitted within the timeframe.”

ISU also released the referee images for the penalty. They said the decision won’t change and would not make any further comments on this matter.

The referee images are as follows:

The green arrow is the game player, red arrow points to the player who disrupted the game player.

Controversy on penalty-filled Olympic 3,000 relay in short track_0

Controversy on penalty-filled Olympic 3,000 relay in short track_1

However, people who have watched the game posted screenshots of the game on social media and said Korean disrupted the game players as well. Many commented that the judge’s scale is not unified and the decision is unfair.