During the snowboarding cross racing event at the Milan Winter Olympics, 21-year-old Nathan Pare was disqualified for making contact with another racer at the event.
Pare ended up winning the race, crossing the line first and raising his hands in the air. The race was the quarterfinal for the entire event, and the result would have given him a clear chance in the semifinal and a shot at a medal.
Instead, he is out of the competition after he made a move off his line that resulted in him hitting a Spanish racer, though the American had done nothing wrong while running his race.
“To have a call like that, at the Olympics, pretty much stripping it away from me, it’s hard to deal with,” Pare said.
In the aftermath of the officials’ decision to disqualify Pare, an International Ski and Snowboard Federation official spoke to The Athletic.
“There was no intentional contact, but it was a clear mistake that cut off the other athlete,” the FIS official told the outlet.
“Under the rules, if a rider makes such an error and takes another athlete out, they are ranked last in the heat. This falls under line deviation within the race interference rules.”
What did Nathan Pare say in defense of his move?
While the judges reached a firm decision, Pare disagreed about the ruling.
“When I started my turn, they’re saying that I deviated from my turn line to basically go into someone else’s, which I don’t necessarily feel is completely accurate,” Pare said.
“If you go back and watch, I feel like the two French boys in the race, they took the exact same line as me, and I followed them.
The snowboarder even went as far as to claim that he would take the same line again if he could redo it.
“I did everything I felt was correct,” he said. “I would probably go retake the line again if I was given the option.”
Team USA is not protesting the decision, despite his steadfast denial that he did anything that would warrant disqualification.
