Editorial: Skating’s judging tarnishes the Games

Friday, Feb. 15, 2002 | 2:05 a.m.

Olympic figure skating always is embroiled in some kind of dispute, but the controversy stirred up at the Winter Games in Salt Lake City is extraordinary even by Olympic standards. Fans and skating analysts are upset that the Canadian team in the pairs, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, were robbed of a gold medal that instead went to the Russians, a nation that has dominated the sport for decades. The Canadians' final program was flawless in contrast to that of Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, who committed what clearly was a technical error. France's Olympic chief said that there was no collusion between France and the East European nations to give the gold medal to the Russians, as some have suggested, but Didier Gilhaguet did acknowledge that his nation's skating judge was pressured before she voted for the Russians. It remains to be s een what exactly caused the French judge to vote the way she did, but it put the Russians barely over the top since it was ! a 5-4 decision.

Any sport that relies on judges to determine the winners -- whether it's figure skating in the Winter Olympics or gymnastics in the Summer Olympics -- will result in controversy because of subjectivity and politics. But doubts about figure skating have reached a critical mass because of the lack of confidence in the judging. If Olympic officials and figure skating officials want the medals to mean anything at all, and not leave a blemish on the Games themselves, they will have to make sweeping changes to the judging, taking steps to reduce the collusion and outside pressure among the judges.

Fairness would dictate that if it can be shown that the French judge either colluded with East European judges, or was pressured into changing her vote, then the IOC should award the gold medal to the Canadians, possibly allowing them to share it with the Russians. International Olympic Committee director general Francois Carrard said the International Skating Union must resolve the controversy immediately. We'll have to wait and see if the IOC is serious, though. This is, after all, the same IOC that recently postponed the acceptance of conflict-of-interest rules that were proposed following the IOC's bribery scandal. Reform isn't exactly one of the IOC's strong suits.