Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Without the diva judges, the bad costumes and the chance for scandal, it's just a chili cookoff on ice.
Feb 16, 2002 | The best part of the Friday press conference announcing that Canadians David Pelletier and Jamie Sale would be awarded the pairs figure skating gold medals that many observers thought they'd been cheated out of Monday came when a reporter was asked to stand up to ask his question.
"I am standing," he said, bringing down the house with a 100-year-old vaudeville joke.
Which is only appropriate, because the judging scandal that's dominated the 2002 Winter Olympics so far is one long seltzer-down-the-pants clown act. But then, so is the sport it hinges on.
Craig Fenech, the Canadians' agent, was asked Friday what could be done to prevent a repeat of the scandal, in which French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne was suspended indefinitely by the International Skating Union, whose president said "she acted in a way that was not adequate to guarantee both pairs equal condition." Le Gougne was quoted Thursday saying she was pressured to vote for the Russians, Anton Sikharulidze and Yelena Berezhnaya (who will get to keep their gold), but later denied saying that.
Fenech said he didn't really have an answer, but quoted Pelletier, who he said had told him early on, "I don't have to have the gold medal, but I want the truth to come out."
Well, the truth was already out. It's been out for years. Figure skating is a corrupt sport where the winners don't win because they're the best, they win because the judges, for reasons that have as much to do with off-ice as on-ice factors, "like" them. (How many times have you heard a TV commentator mention that the judges will or won't "like" something?) Everybody knows this. Even Pelletier knows it. "What I can't control, I can't control," he said just after the free skate. "But if we didn't want things like this to happen, we would have taken up skiing down a mountain."
Of course, that Zen-like acceptance of the world as it stands served Pelletier fine for the first 15 years or so he was at this figure skating thing -- but when the world as it stands bit him on the ass on the world's biggest stage, he became a seeker of truth.
I know he wasn't famous yet, but did he complain when the pre-felonious Tonya Harding used to get lower marks for her skating because the judges didn't "like" her homemade costumes -- incredible, given the tackiness of virtually all figure skating costumes, that anyone could ever be judged harshly for anything they wear -- or because she was, shall we say, not the deferential little princess the judges seem to, you know, "like"?
Where has he been while figure skating judges make it part of their job to attend practices the week before an event, dividing the skaters into various groups -- low, middle, high -- virtually assuring all but those in the high group that they can leap to the ceiling and land like a swan without having a prayer to win? Where was he during the various vote-trading or vote-fixing scandals that have come to light over the years at non-Olympic events?
Get Salon in your mailbox!