{"id":293673,"date":"2026-02-20T15:56:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/293673\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:56:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:56:31","slug":"winter-olympics-2026-snowboard-experts-say-zoi-sadowski-synnott-robbed-of-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/293673\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Olympics 2026: Snowboard experts say Zoi Sadowski-Synnott robbed of gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
Speaking to TNT Sports, two-time British Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller said she felt the final results were controversial.<\/p>\n
Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (left) with Japan\u2019s Mari Fukada and Kokomo Murase after the women’s snowboard slopestyle final, an event for which the judges and the course came in for criticism. Photo \/ Hannah Peters, Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the rail section, Murase\u2019s might have been a little bit more technical,\u201d Fuller said, \u201cbut Zoi\u2019s jumps and execution were so clean and they were a lot more technical. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m going to put it out there and say I think the judging was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former Olympian felt scoring on Fukada\u2019s winning run was not consistent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there was injustice in the results of today\u2019s women\u2019s slopestyle final, a real shame to see that progression wasn\u2019t rewarded on this instance.\u201d<\/p>\n
The International Olympic Committee have been asked to comment. <\/p>\n
Questions have also been raised about the speed of the course after the competition was rescheduled to take place hours after the men\u2019s slopestyle final because of heavy snowfall.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s competition faced a similar problem with speed, and Sadowski-Synnott said on Ryan Bridge TODAY the conditions played a key factor in the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe struggled with speed because of fresh snow,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey tried to clear the course but, when you have fresh snow, it hasn\u2019t quite settled or compacted yet, so it\u2019s not as fast and we also had a headwind, which when you\u2019re going off 60ft [18m] jumps trying to do your best tricks, it adds a bit of a spanner in the works.\u201d<\/p>\n
The silver medallist went on to say the competitors knew what conditions they were going to have to deal with and everyone gave it all they had. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking to TNT Sports, two-time British Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller said she felt the final results were controversial.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,1558,10712,11687,5658,6489,4241,305,64789,194,26019,154808,111,43,139,69,1118,5106,50557,145065,162363,5659,8466,3271,7457,115606,162364,544,19554,23644,102,97634],"class_list":["post-293673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-been","tag-claiming","tag-criticised","tag-experts","tag-games","tag-gold","tag-have","tag-judging","tag-kiwi","tag-medal","tag-milanocortina","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-olympics","tag-robbed","tag-sadowskisynnott","tag-sadowskisynnotts","tag-say","tag-second","tag-should","tag-silver","tag-snowboard","tag-snowsport","tag-some","tag-taken","tag-winter","tag-with","tag-zoi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}