In an unprecedented ceremony commemorating an unprecedented decision, Canadian pairs skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were given an Olympic gold medal Sunday night they thought they should have received six days earlier.
Russians Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze, who had won what was presumed to be the event’s only gold medal last Monday, accompanied the Canadians as the second gold was presented to them by International Skating Union President Ottavio Cinquanta of Italy.
Bronze medalists Shen Xue and Hongbo Zhao of China declined an invitation to attend the ceremony before a crowd of 16,000 that had bought tickets to see the second phase of the ice-dance competition at the Salt Lake Ice Center.
As they climbed onto the awards podium and waved to the crowd, Bereznaia held hands with Sale and Pelletier with Sikharulidze. The Russians had come out for the 10-minute ceremony with their gold medals already around their necks. All four wore their Olympic teams’ warmup suits as their anthems were played–Russia’s first–and their flags raised.
“I think the four of us were part of history, and that’s something that is great,” Pelletier said. “Obviously, it was a tough few days, but now we’re happy to put some closure to it.”
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Never before had a second Olympic gold medal been given to rectify a problem caused by a judge’s misconduct in a subjectively judged sport. Never before had an Olympian received such a gold medal while the Games in which they had competed still were taking place.
“It’s the most bizarre thing that has ever happened,” Sale said.
The Solomonic decision to award a second gold medal in pairs was made to end a controversy that had overshadowed everything else happening in the 2002 Winter Olympics since the pairs final ended with the Russians winning a 5-4 judges’ decision in the decisive free skate.
“It is an exit out of a situation there was no exit out of,” Valentin Piseev, president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, said Sunday during a break in the ice dancing
The resolution came after Canada asked for a hearing before an international sports tribunal that might have compelled skating judges to testify. With that threat and pressure from IOC President Jacques Rogge of Belgium, ISU President Cinquanta retreated from his earlier position that the case would not be heard until Monday’s regularly scheduled meeting of his organization’s governing council.
It was perversely appropriate that the ceremony took place after a phase of the ice-dance competition because pairs and dance have been linked in speculation about vote-trading deals. The prevailing theory is that French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne knew her vote for the Russian pair would later produce a Russian vote for the French couple, Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, who lead the dance event going into Monday’s final.
“Are you happy to do this,” Cinquanta was asked as he left his seat to preside over the medal presentation.
“I have been ordered to do the ceremony, and I do the ceremony,” he said.
The ISU continues to investigate reports it received last week alleging approaches about vote-trading in the pairs and dance events that go back to last November, according to Tribune sources.
In its Monday edition, the French sports daily, L’Equipe, quoted Le Gougne as saying she was pressured by a top ISU official, technical delegate Sally-Anne Stapleford of Great Britain, to implicate French ice sports federation Didier Gailhaguet in the controversy. When she broke down at the pairs event review hearing held Tuesday, Le Gougne said she was pressured by Gailhaguet to vote for the Russians. Le Gougne maintains she fingered Gailhaguet unfairly because of emotional stress.
Le Gougne also told L’Equipe that a “a majority of ISU members” had begun trying to influence judges on the Canadians’ behalf as long ago as the March 2000 world championships in Nice, France.
Le Gougne has admitted only to failure to report the approaches made to her, as required by ISU rules. She has steadfastly maintained voting for the Russians “with my soul and my conscience.”
After two days of criticizing the decision to have a second medal and lamenting their pair had been made to feel like villains, the Russians have decided to spin the situation to their advantage.
“Usually Russian skaters are not so famous,” said their coach, Tamara Moskvina. “One positive thing at least is their names now are pronounced correctly by everyone. Even the president of the International Olympic Committee has learned how to pronounce them.
“We don’t say thanks to the scandal, but it happened, so what can we do?”
Moskvina was speaking Sunday on her way back from a meeting with Rogge at which the protocol for the ceremony was discussed. Officials of both the Russian and Canadian teams also attended the meeting. Rogge watched the ceremony from one of the rinkside seats reserved for the IOC.
Before the conversation ended Moskvina asked her caller, “I have a message from this person Diane Sawyer. Do you know who this is?”
It took Utah’s O.C. Tanner Co. 20 hours to manufacture the new medals after receiving the request for them from Olympic officials Friday. The company had made duplicate medals for timed events, where there can be ties, but made no such provision for subjectively judged events.
This is only the third time in the 106 years of the modern Olympics that gold medals have been given retroactively. Only one other Olympian, Sylvie Frechette of Canada, received the gold medal while she was living.
Jim Thorpe, called by the King of Sweden the greatest athlete of all time when he won two gold medals at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, had been dead for 30 years when those medals were restored to his children on Jan. 18, 1983.
The gold medals had been stripped from him when it was revealed in 1913 he had been paid for playing minor-league baseball, which violated Olympic rules against professionalism that existed until the 1980s.
Frechette won her gold for synchronized swimming at the 1992 Olympics, in which she was originally second behind Kristen Babb-Sprague of the United States. Canada’s Dick Pound, then a powerful IOC member, began lobbying for a second gold for Frechette after it was discovered a judge made an error entering Frechette’s score into a computer. The score she wanted to give Frechette tied her with Kristen Babb-Sprague of the United States.
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Pound’s efforts paid off 16 months later. Frechette received her gold in a special ceremony on Dec. 15, 1993, at the Montreal Forum.