SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Feb 23 (AFP) - Another gold, another row - Olympic figure skating will never be the same again.

The dirtiest figure skating competition in Olympic history has resulted in a total overhaul of the sport.

The International Skating Union (ISU) are under orders from International Olympic Committee (IOC) boss Jacques Rogge to clean up its act or risk it's future as an Olympic sport.

Thurday night's women's competition was the last to be run under the present marks system after ISU boss Ottavio Cinquanta hastily unveiled proposals for a total overhaul to stamp out bloc voting.

The overhaul follows the "Skate-gate" scandal which exploded after a French judge revealed she was pressured to vote for Russian pairs Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze ahead of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada in what is claimed was a vote-trade for a French ice dance victory.

Cinquanta, under pressure from the IOC, was forced to declare a tie between the Russians and Canadians. A second set of gold medals were presented to the Canadians in a special ceremony at which both couples stood side-by-side.

Fears that the ruling would open the floodgates to similar protests were proved correct when within days there were two more appeals.

Just as it began ten days previously the curtains came down on the women's competition with a 5-4 split, tears, controversy and recriminations.

Nobody disputed that 16-year-old American Sarah Hughes gave a gold-medal winning performance with a routine which included two triple-triple jumps landed for the first time in competition.

The row was that she jumped from fourth to first ahead of experienced three-time world silver medallist Irina Slutskaya of Russia, who missed the title by the slimmest of margins.

Slutskaya's failure to become the first Russian woman to win an Olympic figure skating gold in favour of an American didn't help matters.

In tears Slutskaya said: "Interesting thing about these Olympics, I'm obviously not the only Russian to have suffered here."

Russian figure skating chief Valentin Piseyev immediately protested to the ISU at the "unobjective judging by the majority of the panel."

"We ask to reconsider the result by giving out the second gold medal to Irina Slutskaya," he added. The protest was thrown out by the ISU.

The Russians are smarting at their least successful Olympic figure skating results in recent years.

At both the 1994 Lillehammer Games and the 1998 Nagano Games they won three out of the four titles on offer.

This time round they took one outright -- Alexei Yagudin's brilliant men's win -- and were forced to share the pairs. They also took two silver, Yevgeny Plushenko in the men's and Slutskaya.

But Yagudin's historic performance which saw him gain the highest number of 6.0s in Olympic men's competition was overshadowed by his country's worst showing since the 1984 Sarajevo Games, when they won just one gold.

Their 11th straight gold medal in the pairs was tainted, and they lost their ice dancing dominance to Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, who won France's first gold medal in 70 years.

Amid questions being asked about the French victory, Russians Irina Lobacheva and Ilia Averbukh took silver, with Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio winning Italy's first ever Olympic figure skating medal.

But the controversy didn't end there.

Lithuanian ice dancers Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas unsuccessfully appealed their fifth placing after the two couples who finished ahead of them both fell.

"Our case is not the Canadian case. It wasn't of such huge media interest. We don't have as much influence," said Vanagas.

But he added: "We just want somebody to improve the judging system."

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