Ice and soap a dangerous mix

On Wednesday morning Ottavio Cinquanta, a Milanese businessman and the head of the International Skating Union came to the second floor of the Salt Palace, the large downtown building where the Olympic media are based. He sat in a chair in a large interview room for 80 minutes and sweated a lot. Sometimes he sounded defensive. A lot of the time he sounded surprised.

He can hardly have imagined that the lucrative dog and pony show which is figure skating could have stoked up such passions or could have created so many instant experts among the media. Yet every Olympic celebration has its moments like this, the media in full hue-and-cry mode, a sport under attack, apocalyptic headlines. Cinquanta stood up for his sport as he had a right to and explained again and again that skating comes down to subjectivity. You like. You don't like. You vote.

We, the media didn't like. So yesterday Cinquanta was back, not quite led in by the ear by IOC president Jacques Rogge, but something close to it. As late as Thursday afternoon, Cinquanta had been adamant that the ISU would look into the matter at its own pace. Yesterday he announced that a second gold medal would be minted and handed to the Canadian skating pair Jamie Sale and Dave Pelletier. There had been, he said, unspecified impropriety on the part of the French judge Marie-Reine La Gougne.

On Thursday night the ISU made a decision and a deliberation. The decision was to suspend La Gougne. The deliberation (although outside their remit) was to award a second gold medal. This was passed onto the IOC executive wherein seven of nine members voted in favour. Cue violins. Cue happy ending.

For the media, who fell on the business like a pack of wolves happening across a lamb chop, this was undoubtedly a result. The Salt Palace has been buzzing with rumours all week. Bribes, pressure,coercion, deals, conspiracies. You ran with your theory of choice.

At one minute La Gougne, the French judge at the centre of most of the rumours, is alleged to have fled back to France. The next, she is living the high life and cackling like Cruella de Ville in the suite of a top Salt Lake City hotel. Basically we have been like a sample audience asked to view a movie the ending of which we didn't like.

The story of La Gougne's instant notoriety is but a small part of the explosion which occurred here this week. By Tuesday an American referee had come forward to say that he'd heard that La Gougne was pressured to "act in a certain way".

By Thursday she was featuring as the lead in monologues on the late-night talk shows shows. "Hey, lonely on Valentines Night?" asked Dave Letterman, "well why don't you give that French judge a call. With a little pressure she'll screw anybody."

By yesterday morning La Gougne was public enemy number one, the perpetrator of a hazy crime in a sport few of us understand.

Meanwhile, Sale and Pelletier had learned anyway that they couldn't grieve forever. Had they won on Monday night they would be just another couple of rink rats walking the streets of Salt Lake City.

This outcome, has been better than winning in many ways. There is already a tug-of-love between Madison Avenue, who want them for adverts, and Hollywood, who want their stories for movies. Between times they have appeared on every main evening news show (the gold larceny is the main story) been the main guests on Larry King Live, showed up on Jay Leno and have become the greatest celebrities Salt Lake City has known since the Osmonds were in their pomp. Now they have a gold medal to bring home to Canada.

It's a fine old story and for a while everyone has forgotten that while acknowledging it's elements of grace and bravery we generally laugh at figure skating with its absurd theatrics, camp, pencil-thin men, it's kiss and cry areas, and it's overwrought emotional scenes. We forget that it is a sport where nobody wins by two clear goals but everything hinges on the opinion of judges. And judges often get it wrong while thinking that they have it right.

The argument for the Russian pair, an argument which is scarcely utterable in English-speaking circles here at the moment (you might as well wear a Viva Osama T-shirt) is that they were skating a more ambitious programme, they skated with finer and more classical lines. They made a minute error, but for their ambition and classicism they were awarded a narrow decision over the Canadians, who were more captivating and who skated a flawless but less ambitious routine, one that everyone had seen them perform at major events before.

In the aftermath, when the Russians were initially awarded the gold, mass hysteria broken out, not least on NBC television where commentator and former skater Scott Hamilton rose to a crescendo of excitement as the Canadians got to the end of their 4½-minute Love Story routine.

"Throw triple loop, and the gold is theirs!" Hamilton screamed. They did. It wasn't. "Why? Why? Why?" wailed one famous coach.

Why? Because that apparently is the way the sport is.

Three years ago in Lausanne at the World Champions a Russian judge and a Ukrainian judge were caught on camera colluding in judging. Both judges had their feet stuck out underneath the front of their desk. The Ukrainian was using a primitive form of morse code to tap out who he'd ranked one, two and three.

Eight years ago in Lillehammer most Americans left town feeling that Nancy Kerrigan had been robbed by Oksana Baiul. Brits still get weepy at what was done to dear old Torvill and Dean. As Jamie Sale herself said last Monday night. "That's the way skating works. It's judged."

The Olympics, though are a unique media event. You have to take into account how the media Olympics works. Thousands of journalists head out in different directions every morning only to file copy and then find out that their editors have been captivated by something else entirely back in the office. A scandal gets everyone in the one room, everyone covering the one event, the very thing that they are watching back in the office. This scandal got played like it was a threat to the civilised world.

If the judging had been reversed precisely, if the Russians had been the aggrieved pair? Who knows? Perhaps the secret to the touchpaper of emotions which the week has lit is the fact that most neutrals would dearly have loved the underdog Canadians to have won (although underdog may be a misnomer, they are world champions). Soviet and then Russian dominance of the pairs competition has been almost oppressive for the sport.

Since Innsbruck in 1964, the Russians have owned the Olympics pairs gold medal. With their classicism, their ballet influences and their strange names the Russians created a skating dynasty. Everyone was ready for a couple of cute Canadians playing out Love Story.

There were few takers last week for the argument put forward by the legendary coach of the Russian pair, Tamara Moskvina, who said the Russians made better turns, had more speed, made better steps and used better flow. But, we spluttered, the Canadians didn't fall on their backsides.

The fuss worked its way through the system quickly. Quite improperly, IOC president Jacques Rogge put extreme pressure on the ISU to come up with something, anything by way of explanation, and yesterday the Canadians received their gold. Figure skating is the great cash cow of the winter games. Rogge doesn't like to see it looking sick.

One feels some sympathy for the hapless Russians at the centre of it all. This will always now be the story of Jamie and David. The controversy robbed us of the chance to enjoy the story of Elena and Anton, the Russian pair who are themselves a soap opera on ice.

Berezhnaya is best remembered, perhaps, for an incident which occurred with a previous parner, Oleg Shliakov, back in January1996. The pair were practising in a Moscow ring when Berezhnaya fell. The toe-pick of her partner's skate entered her skull and she was fortunate to come off the ice alive. She suffered brain damage, motor function impairment, but made a full and remarkable recovery.

Not long afterwards she teamed up with Sikharulidze. The pair, now based in the US, have been through the best of times and the worst of times.

Sikharulidze is known in ice-skating circles as a man who likes to party, and his absences from various functions and exhibitions have played their part in a stormy relationship between the pair.

They won the European Championships, but had the title removed from them when Berezhnaya tested positive for a banned substance. She claimed then and continued to claim that the test was failed as a result of having taken an over-the-counter medicine for a cold.

This week through no fault of their own they walked straight into the propellors of the biggest Olympic scandal since Ben Johnson and at the end had to stand and watch their rivals walking off itno the sunset hand in hand as the mob called out for more.