The tragedy of short track tumbles: Who gets to advance when skaters crash?
Crashes are common in short track, and penalty rules won’t always save skater’s shot at Olympic gold.
One of the primary differences between short track and speedskating is the form of competition. Speedskaters race against the clock, in two lanes. Short track speedskaters race against each other, jockeying for position, occasionally at 30 miles per hour. Sometimes, they collide and fall. Sometimes, they fall totally of their own volition and take out other skaters. Over the weekend at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics, someone fell and slid so far across the rink on their belly they almost took out another skater, who was at that point on the other side of the oval track.
Crashes are pretty wild, and pretty common, but there’s another, fairly tragic thing about short track falls: If another skater takes you out, that fall can be it for your dreams too.
Penalties in short track are designed to help mitigate falls that affect other skaters. If a skater can be shown to be at specific fault for another skater’s fall, that skater will be penalized and sometimes disqualified from the competition. Often times, in those cases, skaters who were detrimentally affected by the penalty will advance. Skaters can also be disqualified for impeding (pushing, blocking or tripping) another skater.
According to NBC Olympics:
"When there is a violation, or if someone takes out another athlete in a fall, the victim of the infraction may be allowed to advance, providing he was in contention to advance otherwise; advancement is the discretion of the chief referee."
In other words, there are necessarily going to be instances where the skater is not technically at fault for his or her fall, but is also not necessarily determined to be eligible for advancement. Crashing is, ultimately, just a part of the sport and many competitors rally from falls to win, place or qualify anyways.
(There are also times when the referees just get it wrong. Over the weekend, the commentators and video replay identified that an Australian skater, Andy Jung, had pushed an Italian, Yuri Confortola, who fell taking down a Chinese skater, Tianyu Han. The referees concluded that Confortola was at fault, disqualifying him and advancing Jung and Han.)
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