This year’s 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina has not been without some controversy when it comes to judges across various sports. But when it comes to women’s snowboarding, NBC analyst Todd Richards fired off some of the most pointed criticism yet.
While there hasn’t yet been anything that approaches the infamous French judge rigging the pairs figure skating competition back in 2002, there has been some questionable scoring. Another French judge in this year’s ice dancing competition greatly favored the French skaters who won gold over American duo Madison Chock and Evan Bates. Similarly, many felt American Mac Forehand was wronged of the gold medal in the ski big air competition after landing a trick that had never been done before in competition.
But according to NBC snowboarding analyst Todd Richards, the biggest injustice was done in the women’s snowboard slopestyle event.
Mari Fukada of Japan won gold, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott of New Zealand won silver, and Kokomo Murase of Japan took home the bronze. However, Richards did not approve of the podium in taking to Instagram to rant about the decisions by the judges in the event.
“That was the worst judging I’ve ever seen at an event ever,” Richards said. “I’m sorry. You guys blew it judges. You absolutely flipping blew it on this one. That was literally, people need new TVs it was that bad. How do you award a gold medal to two 720s? The rails weren’t that good I’m sorry. You guys blew it and you’re going to take the heat for this one. You absolutely blew it. What do you guys think? I think that if you’re talking about setting snowboarding back, great job. That was terrible. Absolute s— judging.”
Todd Richards is no stranger to being outspoken over snowboarding. The former Olympian was caught on a hot mic earlier in the games calling the men’s big air final “boring.” Snowboarding is done at this year’s Olympics, hopefully next time around in 2030 it brings some more exciting tricks and less controversial scores.
About Matt Yoder