The frequent penalties have a huge relationship with the characteristics of the project, and short track speed skating has never lacked accidents

Tonight's Short Track Speed Skating Men's 1500m Final at the Beijing Winter Olympics saw a very rare scene in which ten athletes actually competed in the final Group A. The direct cause of this phenomenon is the frequent occurrence of accidents in the semi-finals of the project. Under normal circumstances, the top two of the three groups are six people to advance to the final, but because the referee has repeatedly awarded penalties in this semi-final, as many as four athletes have been selected for the Final of Group A in a "judgmental" manner.

Ren Ziwei, who is currently ranked no. 1 in the world in the project, missed the final because of his foul in the semi-finals, and it was precisely because of his foul with Charles Hamelin that three athletes in their third group were "sentenced" to Group A. After the game, Ren Ziwei accepted the result calmly, "It was my movement that was too big, and the referee's decision was no problem." ”

In the three match days of short track speed skating that have ended, referees from the International Skating Federation have handed out as many as 31 penalties (including two yellow cards), and a considerable number of these awards have changed the final result of the match. In fact, this kind of contingency is directly related to the characteristics of short track speed skating. In short-track speed skating, the absolute speed of the player is only one of the contents of the competition on the field, and the athlete must master a variety of "game skills" - including cornering techniques, overtaking techniques, following tactics, teammate cover, reasonable blocking, etc. How to choose a reasonable time and position to use reasonable skills is especially critical in the fierce competition. It is precisely because the players continue to use various techniques in the state of high-speed sports that short track speed skating has become a highly accidental event, and many times the results of the competition will be unexpected.

Accidents and accidents are very common in major races of short track speed skating. Four years ago, at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, short track speed skating had a record of as many as 14 fouls per matchday. At that time, a number of Chinese athletes, including Han Tianyu, Wu Dajing and Fan Kexin, had been convicted of fouls, including an impressive scene in the women's 3000m relay Group A final: China and Canada crossed the finish line with second and third results respectively, but both were found to be fouled and cancelled after the race.

In the final of the men's 500m Group A of the 2019 Short Track Speed Skating World Championships, there was also a scene that chinese audiences still remember vividly. The first shot of the race, South Korea's Huang Daxian rushed to run; the second shot, Hungary's Liu Shaolin was disqualified; the third shot, Wu Dajing overtook Huang Daxian early, but Huang Daxian brought down Wu Dajing in the anti-overtime, and the two fell off the track together, but surprisingly, the referee did not punish Huang Daxian for fouls, but chose to replay; the fourth shot, Huang Daxian won the championship in 42.490 seconds, Wu Dajing was slightly inferior to the runner-up, and teammate Ren Ziwei won the bronze medal. After the match, Wu Dajing thought that the opponent's surpassing was suspected of "dangerous action", but he also said that doing a good job is the most important thing, "Playing iron also needs to be hard, so that he can't keep up with you." ”

Dating back to the more distant 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the women's 3,000m relay final was held to the penultimate lap, and the South Korean team made a blocking action to prevent the Chinese team from overtaking, resulting in a significant decrease in Sun Linlin's sliding speed. The South Korean team then crossed the finish line first, but just as it was celebrating, the referee judged the South Korean team to block the foul through slow-motion replay, and the gold medal finally went to the Chinese team.

In the women's 500m final of short track speed skating at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, there was also a scene that many Chinese sports fans still remember. At that time, the Chinese athlete Li Jianrou, who entered the final, was not dominant, and was thrown away by the other three opponents at the beginning of the game, but everyone did not expect that there was an unexpected collision in the second corner, Italy's Fang Tana, South Korea's Park Seung-ji and Britain's Christie all fell, and Li Jianrou was completely unaffected by this accident due to the relatively large backward distance, and finally led all the way across the finish line and stood on the championship podium.

It is worth mentioning that in view of the previous problems in short-track speed skating, the International Skating Federation has taken advantage of the biennial rule revision to introduce new measures such as the trial version of the technical penalty manual and the definition of the penalty code, with the purpose of continuously refining the previous vague penalty regulations. In this tournament, for example, the referee will give a specific reason and code for the foul after each penalty. In addition, considering that the inner road transcendence has always been a technical link with frequent penalties, in order to unify the penalty standards, the International Skating Federation has added two 5-cm wide blue lines in the competition venue from the 2021-22 season to clarify the distinction of responsibility after a collision between athletes.

Although the serendipity on the field makes short track speed skating full of "charm", it is obvious that the main motivation for the International Skating Federation to continuously improve the penalty system is to let the athletes skate clearly and let the audience see clearly. For short-track speed skating, this improvement is worth looking forward to. (This newspaper Beijing February 9 special telegram)

Author: Wen Wei Po special correspondent Chen Haixiang

Editor: Wu Shu

Photo: Xinhua News Agency