Canadian short track speed skaters, Charles Hamelin and Francois-Louis Tremblay won gold and bronze medals in a wild 500m Olympic short track speed skating event on Friday.
Hamelin came into the event as the reigning world champion and defended his title with a time of 40.981.
Korea’s Si-Bak Sung was the silver medalist in a time of 41.340. Tremblay’s bronze medal time was 46.366.
American, Apolo Anton Ohno was disqualified from the race dropping him from second place to eighth.
The disqualification occurred because of a move he made on Tremblay that was deemed illegal and made Tremblay crash.
Fortunate slips have been something of a theme for Ohno at these Olympics. He was able to make it into the finals thanks to Ho-Suk Lee of Korea tripping in the semi-finals and in an earlier event, a pair of Korean skaters tripped into each other in the 1500 m finals allowing the seven-time Olympic medalist to win a silver.
Hamelin was dominant through the entire course of the event. He won every race he was in starting with the heats and even set a new Olympic record in the quarterfinals with a time of 40.770 beating the mark that Tremblay set in the heats.
The bronze was the fifth medal in Tremblay’s Olympic career, making him, along with Marc Gagnon as the only other Canadian short track speed skater to win five Olympic medals.
A third Canadian involved in the event, Olivier Jean, was another victim of disqualification because of an elbow he threw on a move going past Sung in the semi-finals. The disqualification put him in ninth place.
“Hammelin should have been disqualified for taking out the leading racer in the 500. What he did in taking out the racers balance hand and shoving him on the shoulder was far worse then what Ohno was disqualified for. But when the head referee is a Canadian and he has the chance to hand two medals to canadians what do you expect. The Canadians have shown very poor sportsmanship in this olympics. I guess you can own the podium if your willing to cheat. The Olympic committee should not allow a refree from one of the competeing teams to judge a race.”
Agreed. If officiated correctly, Sung Si-Bak would have won gold, Tremblay silver, with Hamelin and Ohno DQed
That’s not quite what happened, actually. It becomes more apparent after repeated viewings that Sung Si-Bak was already on his way down before Hamelin touched him. He was protecting himself, lest the Korean fall into him. He went off-balance because the Korean grabbed his foot while going down.
Hammelin should have been disqualified for taking out the leading racer in the 500. What he did in taking out the racers balance hand and shoving him on the shoulder was far worse then what Ohno was disqualified for. But when the head referee is a Canadian and he has the chance to hand two medals to canadians what do you expect. The Canadians have shown very poor sportsmanship in this olympics. I guess you can own the podium if your willing to cheat. The Olympic committee should not allow a refree from one of the competeing teams to judge a race.