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Dominoes continue to fall Changes must take place to ensure figure skating's integrityPosted: Thursday February 14, 2002 2:27 AM
Take a look at how many sports are judged by marks or otherwise officiated in the Games: aerial skiing, moguls skiing, halfpipe, ski jumping, Nordic combined, ice hockey and the mother-of-all-eyes-closed arbitrations, figure skating. There is more to this than bad judging now; there is an admitted likelihood that a judge, according to her own camp, actually fixed the outcome of an event. Didier Gailhaguet, the head of the French Olympic team, said Wednesday night that judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne "is a fragile person, and I think she has been somewhat manipulated." Gailhaguet also said, "Some people close to the judge have acted badly and have put someone who is honest and upright but emotionally fragile under pressure." Le Gougne voted higher marks for Russian couple Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sizharulidze than the superior Canadian pair of Jamie Salé and David Pelletier. "What is true is that Marie-Reine has been put under pressure, which pushed her to act in a certain way," Gailhaguet said. In the short run, several things must happen. In the long run, however, it is essential -- read: absolutely mandatory -- that International Skating Union officials, and, for that matter, officials from any Olympic sport, be subject to an independent arbitrator who can bypass the nonsense of "internal assessments" the ISU figures it can conduct in secret. People looking out from the inside will always watch each other's backs. It is time for someone on the outside to look in, ask a lot of hard questions and make officials and administrators accountable for the principles of fair play they are supposed to defend and which they blindly espouse. Sports Illustrated staff writer Brian Cazeneuve is in Utah covering the Olympics for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back regularly for more behind-the-scenes reports from Salt Lake City.
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