A Sport on Thin Ice

There were a lot of smiles at the final outcome of the figure-skating fiasco at the Winter Games, especially from the Canadians. Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who had been forcing smiles all week, flashed real ones when they heard that their silver medals in the ferociously disputed pairs skating event would be traded in for gold. But what made the biggest difference last week were tears.

Early on Tuesday morning, just hours after the gold medal had gone to the Russians, Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, the nine judges of the pairs event and two referees convened in a windowless basement room of the Salt Lake Ice Center. The door was sealed with thick tape that kept prying reporters from eavesdropping on the deliberations. It also prevented them from hearing the weeping of the French judge, Marie-Reine Le Gougne. Ron Pfenning is the U.S. referee who would bring Le Gougne's accusations to Ottavio Cinquanta, president of the International Skating Union. Last week he told TIME that Le Gougne, 40, the crucial swing vote of the pairs-skating event the night before, had sobbed to the astonished judges that her decision had been coerced. Le Gougne claimed that she had voted for the Russian skaters at the direction of the French skating federation and its president, Didier Gailhaguet. "She was very emotional," recalls Pfenning. "She said she was pressured, that she had to put the Russians first, and she said, 'We must do something!'"

Maybe this is what people mean by a watershed event. All last week in Salt Lake City's Olympic Village and in many other parts of the world, there was speculation that someone had leaned on Le Gougne to vote for the Russians in exchange for Russia's vote for the French team in the ice-dancing competition. One Olympic skating judge, who asked to remain anonymous, insisted to TIME that a deal had been struck: "The French have been trying to figure out how to win in ice dancing. I know Gailhaguet has been working for those votes."

Gailhaguet denies those claims and suggests that pressure was brought upon Le Gougne from "left and right"--implying that it came from Canadian skating officials as well. Whatever the truth turns out to be, international figure skating and the Olympic movement itself have been shaken as never before. Even before Tonya Harding went gunning for Nancy Kerrigan, figure skating had an image problem. Not on the ice. On the ice it's all double Axels and triple Salchows and Kristi Yamaguchi twirling straight onto the Wheaties box. Say all you want about the smiley dudes on their snowboards, but when it comes to making the Winter Games a global fascination and a very considerable cash machine, it's the Brian Boitanos and Michelle Kwans of the world who count most.

Where things get cloudy is at the judge's table. For years the sport has been shadowed by stories of vote trading, favoritism and collusion among judges who agree on the winners before the unknowing losers even start their routines. At the world championships three years ago, two judges from Russia and Ukraine were suspended for signaling to one another with their feet. Skating is full of fancy footwork, but we like to think it's confined to the skaters.