SOCHI, Russia -- One of the nine judges who picked a young Russian skater over two more refined competitors for the Olympic gold medal Thursday night was suspended for a year for trying to fix an event at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.
And another is the wife of the president of the Russian figure skating federation.
Inflated scores for the Russians has been a topic of conversation at these Olympic Games, and the women's figure skating long program Thursday night renewed the debate. Adelina Sotnikova of Russia was the surprising winner of the gold medal, upsetting reigning Olympic gold medalist Yuna Kim of South Korea and Italy's Carolina Kostner.
"It's sad that I just presumed Sotnikova was going to get a boost (in points) because this was in Russia," former U.S. Olympic figure skating coach Audrey Weisiger said in a phone interview. "Isn't it sad that I automatically thought that? Not one person in skating I've talked to said that's the way it should have gone."
"I was surprised with the result," Joseph Inman, a top international judge who was on the women's panel at the 2002 Olympics, said in a telephone interview.
"The (judging) panel made me wish that the United States and Canada had split up into many different countries," said choreographer Lori Nichol, who works with Kostner and fourth-place finisher Gracie Gold of the United States, among others.
Judges from the United States and South Korea, as well as two other Western judges, were not chosen by draw to work the women's long program after being on the women's short program panel the night before. Two of their replacements were Ukrainian Yuri Balkov, who was kicked out of judging for a year after being tape-recorded trying to fix the Nagano ice dancing competition by a Canadian judge, and Alla Shekhovtseva, a Russian judge who is married to the Russian federation's president. Other Eastern Europeans were on the panel as well.
