Olympic Pairs Skating Scandal

Gargoyle

Found this pretty good article from Washington Post:

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 15 — I am so fragile today. I am trapped in this French film, and it is a little bit noir and a little bit farce, and it exhausts me so. I have to recline, my handkerchief to my face. I have to take a pain reliever. I cannot answer the phone. I cannot speak above a whisper. I cannot deal with these sordid questions surrounding the Olympic figure skating. Is it raining outside? I feel as if it’s pouring. It is unbearable. I fear I will break.

SURELY MARIE REINE La Gougne, the French judge, knows how I feel. She, too, is a tender flower, a seedling. She is unable to come to the phone, or to say why she did what she did. Perhaps it was because she cannot stare at the ice for too long, the sheer brilliance of it sends sharp pains to her eyes. It’s just - too much beauty. It undoes her.

The manipulators saw her distress and moved in. They said, “We can help you feel less fragile. Less alone.” (What if Condoleezza Rice had these fragile days, too? Days when she had to go off and play the piano. It would put the country in such a bind.)

Some people will wonder how you can be a judge if you are so fragile. Fragile is Blanche DuBois. Fragile is smelling salts. Fragile means you see your analyst three times a week. Fragile is taking to the bed with the vapors, with the curtains drawn and a hot compress. Fragile is reading light novels (like this one) and weeping.

It’s an astonishing admission, really.

Perhaps Reine Le Gougne did not appreciate it when the head of the French Olympic team told the Associated Press just how fragile she is. He suggested that she felt pressure to cast her controversial vote that swung the gold medal to the Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, despite the fact that the Russians committed clear technical errors while the Canadians, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, skated cleanly. “Some people close to the judge have acted badly and have put someone who is honest and upright, but emotionally fragile, under pressure,” Didier Gailhaguet said. “She is a fragile person, and I think she has been somewhat manipulated.”

Gailhaguet later tried to say that was a fragile interpretation of his remarks, but the Associated Press responded that the interview was in French, and perfectly clear.

So many things in this affair make me feel fragile: the pressure of it, trying to discern who the real victim is. To listen to this man, the real victim in this case is not the Canadian pair, but Reine Le Gougne. Mon Dieu, it’s so confusing it makes me swoon.

Also, it makes me feel fragile trying to play this daily game of Clue. Was there a deal to trade the gold to the Russians in exchange for a French medal in ice dancing? The International Skating Union judges and officials are, like Clue characters Col. Mustard and Mrs. Peacock, so stiff and furtive at the same time. “There is an allegation,” ISU President Ottavio Cinquanta says, gravely. But he will not say from whom, or about what. Who Killed Mr. Body? Where, and with what? Did she do it with a wrench? Did she do it with a gun? In the conservatory, or in the study?

Could the ISU be any more stubborn in its insistence on procedure? The ISU continues to maintain that it will not hold a hearing on the scandal until Monday - just before the final round of ice dancing. This, too, makes me feel fragile. Procedure is the ultimate cover for corruption and laziness. It allows the ISU to evade and obfuscate, while it decides what to do about the terrible bind it’s in. If it acknowledges corruption in this event, then it throws all of figure skating open to question. Just how many bargains were struck?

This arrogance by the ISU also makes me feel fragile, this attitude that we, the spectators, aren’t smart enough to judge what we watched that night. Some may not know a triple salchow from a triple loop, or the technicalities in the scoring system. But they know a trip when they see one - and that Russian boy tripped.

And the pain in my head from trying to understand how the ISU justifies the presence of one Yuri Balkov of Ukraine as a judge in ice dancing. Balkov was captured on tape at the 1998 Games in Nagano, trying to vote swap and rig the final results. Balkov was suspended for a year but now he is back. Cinquanta justified his presence by telling a news conference, “His suspension has expired and he is entitled to judge again.” He likened it to an athlete who was suspended for doping.

But surely this isn’t right. Again, I must put a hand to my forehead and take to my bed with fragility. Corruption in judging is far worse than doping. A judge is not an athlete; surely he or she has a much greater and more grave responsibility, that of ensuring the basic integrity of the Games and fairness for all the athletes? And surely there should be zero tolerance for a corrupt judge?

(It is somehow more galling, too, than any other kind of cheating. Doping is a desperate kind of cheating by the athletes themselves, who have at least done some work to get here. Is there anything more contemptible than cheats who sits on the sideline, coolly rattling their Rolexes, making deals on the sweat of others?)

A judge who is too fragile to resist corruption damages all of the Winter Games. There is a simple mathematical equation to Olympic competition: four years of work for three or four minutes of competition. The athletes count on the principle that if, in those few minutes, they can summon the performance of their lives, they will get the medal they deserve. Swiss ski jumper Simon Ammann is the Olympic spirit personified: a total underdog who came out of nowhere, brash and loose, and sailed off the mountain. Rigging the results takes all possibilities out of the Games. It doesn’t just rob competitors or spectators. It robs absolutely everyone.

Judging is the foundation of every sport; all games rely on it, and when it is corrupted everything becomes fragile. We count on the honest perceptions of people with scorecards in their hands or whistles in their mouths. They make judgments on every play, in every sport: They judge whether the ball is fair or foul, whether the pitch is a strike or a ball. They judge whether it was a touchdown or a stop, a catch or a fumble. Whether a shot should count for two points or three. Whether it went in before time expired, or not. They judge with their whistles, and they judge by omission. And it takes some strength of character to make these judgments fairly, in timely fashion, with a roaring crowd in the background.

So there are those of us who would say, if you are so fragile that you have to wear your mink stole inside the arena, you’re in the wrong job, cherie.

Ok, so the French cheated...no big surprise there. What is a big surprise is that the very same Ukrainian jugde reprimanded for vote fixing a few years ago is BACK and judging the Ice Dancing competition this weekend...where - SURPRISE! - none other than the very same French have skaters expected to medal (in ice skating or dancing, that means they'd have to basically have a heart attack on the ice not to medal). So the accusation is that the French vote swapped in exchange for a Gold Medal in ice dance. And depsite all of this, the Ukrainian judge will STILL be judging the competition. What a smokescreen, what a scam.

I read a great quote from another article: "Somewhere Don King is laughing, saying to himself, who would have thought something as seemingly innocent as figure skating could make boxing look so good."