Snowboarder wins Winter Olympics gold medal three years after cancer diagnosis

Canada's Max Parrot has won gold in the Olympic snowboard slopestyle three years after he was diagnosed with cancer.

He called it the "best run of his life" after his second-run score of 90.96 saw him awarded the top medal. Meanwhile, China's 17-year-old Su Yiming took silver, while fellow Canadian Mark McMorris earned bronze.

In 2019 Parrot was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. It had to start to undertake a six-month course of chemotherapy.

And in Bejing, he won the first gold of his life, an achievement which shows, he said, that anything is possible.

“It just really shows how anything is possible,” he said. “Three years ago, I was laying down in a hospital bed with no energy, no muscles, no cardio. And today, I’m an Olympic gold medallist and I did the biggest run of my life.”

Despite the gold, there was controversy over the judging of his second run, according to some.

It was thought that, during his second-run score of 90.96, one of the judges made a “mistake”.

"This is a mistake on the judges' part," said BBC commentator Ed Leigh, who thought that Parrot should have grabbed on his board during his move but he instead delivered what Leigh called a "glaring knee grab".

"Something like that should have cost Parrot two or three points," he added.

"I looked at the sector scores afterward – he got 9.35 out of 10. If they had spotted that, it would have been a six or a 6.5.

"There were three points between bronze and gold – that would have totally upended the podium."

Teams have 15 minutes from the end of the competition to lodge a written appeal with the jury.

"So much went by in those last four years," an emotional Parrot told BBC Sport.

"The last time I was at the Olympics, in Pyeongchang, I got a silver medal, and then I had to go through cancer. It was a nightmare – it's so hard to describe what I've been through.

"You have no cardio, you have no energy, you have no muscles. To be back out here, at the Olympics, on a podium again but with a gold medal, it feels amazing."

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