February 13, 2002
Figure skating scandal

Damian Penny points to the unfolding figure skating scandal in which French and Russian judges collaborated to give the gold to Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. Justin Slotman also has some good stuff.

I don't watch figure skating, so I can't judge the case that Jaime Sale and David Pelletier should have won convincingly. I will say that all joking about "Russian judges" aside, I haven't seen this much fuss about an official's decision since the 1972 US-USSR basketball game. I'm impressed.

There is a silver lining in all this, from the ESPN article linked above:


Until Monday, only a few diehard figure skating fans in North America knew who Sale and Pelletier were. That's all changed.

"Their agent told me he's had about a hundred calls," Brennan said. "I'm guessing they are now a household name, which never would have been if they'd won the gold medal with no controversy. I would imagine that they became millionaires in the last 24 hours. The sympathy factor is huge."


Living well is the best revenge, eh?

Posted by Charles Kuffner on February 13, 2002 to Other sports | TrackBack
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