During a chaotic final lap of the Women's 500 meter Short Track event on Monday, Chinese speed-skater Fan Kexin, 28, was trailing in last place behind Team Canada when she appeared to reach over the leg of her competitor and flick a puck-like track marker into her skates -- causing them both to crash on the track. 


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Fan Kexin (red) appears to snatch up a track marker and slyly send into the left skate of Alyson Charles (middle)


In the clip, which has been struck down and deleted by the International Olympic Committee on numerous platforms, we see Fan Kexin displaying "Olympic Level Cheating" by snatching up a black track marker and sending it into the skates of Candian, Alyson Charles. 


Despite what appears to be some of the most blatant and clearly-documented cases of cheating in recent Olympic, history, there were zero repercussions for Fan or Team China -- who had just won the Gold in the 2000 Meter speed-skating event. 


Fellow Canadian skaters Kim Boutin and Florence Brunelle would go on to finish first and second respectively, securing a spot for Team Canada in the semi-finals. 


But, in a bizarrely WTF twist, it would be Brunelle who would be penalized for the incident -- with her actually being disqualified for "tripping" Charles and Fan.


Fans are understandably in an uproar, questioning how this is possible given what many deem clearcut evidence of cheating by Fan on high-quality, widely disseminated video and the question of what would possibly motivate Brunelle to trip her own teammate en-route to a solid finish.









The women's 500m short track incident comes amid growing controversy over the IOC's handling of mounting allegations of cheating being hurled towards China, including the men's 1000m short-track in which Hungary won its first individual Gold only for Hungary's skater to be disqualified for pushing. 



In the above tweet, we see a GIF that originally went viral on r/sports only to be deleted, like the post showing the women's 500m incident, shortly after. It purportedly shows Ren Ziwei of China pushing Shaolin Lui of Hungary out of the way to secure a first-place finish. 


In another incident, Team South Korea fans and the South Korean Olympic community are in an uproar over what they are calling 'bias' at the hands of referees in response to the disqualification of two south Korean athletes during the Men's Short Track 1000m event, Monday. 




In the widely-circulated clip, we see what appears to be a Team China athlete pushing aside the knee of South Korean athlete, Hwang Dae-heon, as he tried to make a pass. Olympic Officials determined the pass was made too late and the contact was the fault of Hwang. 


All of these come as allegations of other forms of cheating by Chinese officials mount, ranging from isolating foreign athletes from teammates through the alleged misuse of health restrictions to providing lower quality food to other countries teams. 


Everything should, of course, be taken with a grain of salt. The fine print of many of the obscure sports' rulebooks are pretty arcane. Add to that the solemn fact that with the Olympics always at the intersection of international politics, unscrupulous behavior -- and accusations of it, true and false -- are nothing new.