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South Koreans claim bias in officiating
By Maria Titze
Deseret News staff writer
Moments after the Russian Olympic Committee threatened to withdraw from the 2002 Winter Games, claiming officiating bias, Korean Olympic officials took their turn.
Delegation chief Sung-In Park said that although American Apolo Anton Ohno was awarded the gold medal in short track speedskating's 1,500-meter event Wednesday, Korean Dong-Sung Kim won the race and had been wrongly disqualified — for blocking Ohno's path — by incompetent judges.
"There is no doubt about it in my mind, and we are prepared to do whatever necessary to correct this misjudgment," said Park, who did not rule out a boycott of Salt Lake's closing ceremonies.
The Koreans made their first complaint about the call the night of the race to chief referee James Hewish, an Australian, who denied their appeal. The Koreans have now sent letters of complaint to International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta and International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, seeking a hearing before the IOC's Court of Arbitration.
Park said the Koreans have also retained Salt Lake City attorney Brent V. Manning and are prepared to file a lawsuit against Hewish and two assistant referees in U.S. District Court should they not be able to "rectify the situation" any other way.
Manning declined to discuss specific details of the Koreans' grievance. "No federal lawsuit has been filed; there won't be a federal lawsuit filed tomorrow," he said. "I was only retained this morning."
Park did not directly respond to questions about the short-track speedskating rule that says the subjective call of a referee is not appealable — other than to say that Hewish was wrong.
Park also denied that the Korean pursuit of an appeal has come as a consequence of the IOC's decision to award a second gold medal to Canadian figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier after the protest of Canadian officials.
"Through proper procedure, if we can obtain the gold medal, that is what we want," Park said, side-stepping the question of whether the Koreans are seeking to have Ohno's gold medal given to Kim, or if they would settle for one gold medal for each athlete.
"We're not commenting on Ohno's performance," Park said. "He's an excellent skater. What we don't agree with is the referee's misjudgment."
But in the letter to Cinquanta, Park accused Ohno of making a "kind of strange and appealing gesture as if he had been blocked unfairly, improperly and deliberately when he realized he could not overtake Kim."
Rocky Yoon, acting secretary general of the Korean delegation, called it a "Hollywood gesture."
Ohno said Thursday that he was merely pulling back to avoid contact, not wanting to bump Kim and cause a collision similar to Saturday's 1,000-meter event, where Australian Steven Bradbury took the gold after every other skater in the final fell down, including Ohno and Korean Hyun-Soo Ahn.
"The fastest skater should win the medal. Not the lucky skater or the crowd favorite," said Yoon of Wednesday night's 1,500 meters.
A Korean reporter took the accusation a step further, alleging that Hewish had ruled in favor of Ohno as payback for not calling a reskate of Saturday's 1,000 meters.
"Well, we cannot accept that," Park said, drawing a line in the sand of conspiracy. "I don't think that makes sense."
Park said, however, that the disqualification Wednesday has "utterly disappointed and discouraged" Kim and has also left short-track speedskating fans in Korea "gravely disappointed."
Indeed, fans of the sport have taken to the Internet this week, flooding a server with vulgar and threatening e-mail messages to Ohno.
U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Mike Moran said that following Wednesday night's race, the USOC Web site was inundated with 16,000 e-mails, many thought to have come from South Korea. The committee decided to shut down the site Thursday at 2:30 a.m., but it was back up and running by noon Thursday.
Moran said the USOC also "received some e-mail we considered threatening in nature after the first (Saturday's) race."
"As we do in any case when an athlete receives anything like that from any source, we simply notified the FBI," Moran said. FBI spokesman Bill Matthews said the agency is looking into approximately 40 threatening messages sent to Ohno.
FBI officials said the threats are "nonspecific" and not considered credible, but such threats are nonetheless a serious crime and will be investigated.
Security for Ohno has not been enhanced since the threats, Moran said. "We have plenty of activities already in place with each of our teams that was extensive, and we're highly confident in the system we have in place," he said.
Ohno, his coaches and teammates did not talk to reporters after Thursday afternoon's practice at the Salt Lake Ice Center, but the U.S. team politely shared the ice with the Koreans, as well as skaters from Japan, Hungary and Bulgaria.
Ohno said after the race that he had been on the receiving end of disqualifications, too, and that he was not concerning himself with the current controversy.
"(Kim) really did come over on me and a lot of people have said the same thing," Ohno said. "Deep down, I know what really happened, so I am very happy."
Contributing: Derek Jensen, Angie Welling
E-MAIL: mtitze@desnews.com
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February 22, 2002
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