American Figure Skater Accused of Intentionally Injuring Korean Competitor

It looks like the South Korean media is trying to sensationalize an accidental collision during a figure skating competition into an anti-American incident:

A South Korean sports agency is claiming an American figure skater intentionally injured its client Lim Eun-soo with a skate blade in a collision during the ongoing world championships.
According to All That Sports, Lim sustained a cut to her calf Wednesday when Mariah Bell struck Lim’s leg with her skate during their warmup prior to the ladies’ short program at the International Skating Union (ISU) World Figure Skating Championships in Saitama, Japan.

Lim was immediately treated for her injury. She was 30th among 40 skaters to take the ice and had the cut on her leg taped before performing her program.
In her first senior world championships, Lim, 16, set a personal high with 72.91 points to rank fifth, while Bell, 22, scored 71.26 points to place sixth.
An All That Sports official who witnessed the collision said there was enough ground to believe Bell’s act was premeditated, since Lim was skating close to the walls so as not to interfere with others, and Bell came from behind the South Korean to make contact.

Yonhap

The only problem with the South Korean sports agency’s claim is that it is not true:

he agency that represents Lim, All That Sports, told Agence France-Press that Bell has been “bullying Lim for months,” and once the incident occurred, asked the South Korean federation to lodge a formal complaint with the International Skating Union, the worldwide federation for the sport. As one of Lim’s agents told Yonhap News, Bell was waiting her turn to rehearse her program when she “suddenly kicked and stabbed Lim’s calf with her skate blades.”

Sensational? Yes. True? No.
Bell was the one who was rehearsing her short program, not Lim, which means Bell had the right of way on the ice and it was Lim’s job to get out of her way. Videotape shot from the stands shows Bell skating backwards at a relatively rapid pace near the boards with Lim in her path. At that point, Bell would not have been able to see Lim — but Lim had the responsibility to see Bell and move out of the way.

This is protocol for every skater at every competition, where six skaters share the ice on practice sessions and warmups.
What’s more, because Lim trains with Bell, she certainly should know Bell’s short program after seeing it on training sessions for months. All skaters get to know what their training partners and competitors are doing, including where they are headed and where their jumps, spins and other moves are placed on the ice.

As Bell went by Lim, she started to turn to go forward, and apparently her skate blade slightly cut Lim’s leg. Both skaters were able to compete in the short program later in the day, and both did very well, with Lim finishing fifth with a personal-best score and Bell sixth. 
This is not the first time there has been a collision involving two skaters in a competition. In fact, it would be unusual for an event like the worlds or Olympics to go by without a practice collision. The same day as the Bell-Lim scrap, there was a much more spectacular crash: French pairs skater Vanessa James was skating backwards when she and Italy’s Matteo Guarise slammed into each other at full speed during the warmup before the pairs competition.

As conspiracy theories spread across the internet, the ISU put out a statement saying there was “no evidence” that Bell deliberately kicked Lim, and Arutunian told a Russian news agency the same thing, according to an internet translation.

USA Today

It appears to me that the Korean media may be trying to recreate another Apollo Anton Ohno like controversy that led to him being public enemy #1 and increased anti-Americanism in South Korea. However, this was not the Olympics and no gold medal was on the line thus I expect this will be quickly forgotten.

However, continue to expect every little incident that can remotely be twisted for anti-Americanism to be published hoping something will eventually stick.