Le Gougne at the heart of scandal

PARIS (AP) -- Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the judge at the center of the Olympic pairs skating controversy, has been described as everything from "emotionally fragile" to tough under pressure.

The 40-year-old French woman, who lives in the eastern city of Strasbourg, started out as a skater but only got as far as the French championships before turning to judging.

A year ago, she described her own struggle to succeed and denounced what she saw as rampant sexism in the skating world.

"To succeed, [a woman] has to prove oneself 20 times more than a guy does," she told L'Humanite, a French newspaper, in January, 2001. "I know many young girls who quit because they didn't have the strength to continue to fight."

"As for me, they did everything they could to eliminate me, and of course the attacks were often below the belt.

"I got anonymous phone calls ... They enter into your personal life and try to massacre you on all levels. It took 10 years of hell to establish myself [as a judge].

"On the judges' bench, you hear remarks that are much ruder, if not cruel, about female skaters than male skaters. Like 'fat cows' when they weigh two kilos too many, whereas if it's a boy, they never say 'fat pig.'"

As an athlete, Le Gougne placed third at the 1976 French Championships, and eighth in the 1975 international junior competition in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia.

She began judging in 1981, and has judged at the World Championships and at the men's event at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano. But she attracted little attention until the scandal broke this week.

The French judge says she was pressured by her own federation to give Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze the gold. The vote was close -- 5-4 -- but it surprised many observers, who said Canadian Jamie Sale and David Pelletier skated flawlessly, while the Russians made a few technical errors.

Didier Gailhaguet, head of the French Olympic committee and the country's figure skating federation, told an Associated Press reporter that Le Gougne was "honest and upright but emotionally fragile under pressure."

Fellow skating judge Philippe Meriguet described her differently to France Soir newspaper: "She's not in the habit of [bending], but rather resisting pressure."

 

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