Byline: Bob Ford
SALT LAKE CITY _ It was Day 3 of "The Greatest Thing To Happen To Figure Skating Since Tonya Kneecapped Nancy," and you couldn't keep up with the press conferences without a scorecard, a translation headset and a handy atlas of global politics.
The Canadians were still madder than the last time the general store ran out of lard. The Russians were still walking around with the gold medals in the pairs competition. And NBC was so upset about the whole, sordid business you could hear the executives giggling from their penthouse suites.
"Olympic Controversy Attracting Huge Numbers!!!" was the subtle subject line on one of a series of giddy e-mails from the network, which has seen this shambling ratings nag transform into a galloping thoroughbred almost overnight.
More than 300,000 votes were recorded on the network's internet poll on the subject, breaking the record for respondents previously held by the poll on whether Bill Clinton should resign as president.
Nearly 92 percent of the devoted figure skating fans felt Jamie Sale and David Pelletier of Canada should have won the gold medal over Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze of Russia, it was breathlessly reported. The other 8 percent believed that Bill should definitely hang in there.
In the real news of the day, such as it was, the president of the International Skating Union revealed that head referee Ron Pfenning of the United States had filed a written report that questioned how the pairs event was judged. Then, the International Olympic Committee, in its own press conference, told the ski federation to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible or it would step in.
"I have an allegation, and I have a denial," Ottavio Cinquanta, the ISU boss, said. "So, we have to go on."
What we go onto, apparently, is a closed-door "internal assessment" process that will conclude Monday when the international federation's ruling council convenes to wear its festive hats and make a decision on the matter.
"The problem is how to prove it," Cinquanta said of a possible judging impropriety.
The real problem for Cinquanta was how to dodge the verbal tomatoes tossed his way during a long, contentious press conference attended by about 1,000 journalists, each of whom arrived carrying a ringing cell phone, a batch of nasty questions and an attitude.
"You are sliding around like a skater," the man from the Montreal Journal said in French, tired of trying to pin down Cinquanta. "You do not realize how this candle burns."
Cinquanta knew he was on the hot seat, however, and was definitely aware that the poor, robbed Canadians had become not only the darlings, but the dominant story of the Winter Olympics.
"We're not going to give the public the right to judge figure skating competitions," Cinquanta, who is Italian, answered in his own huffy French. "If you take advantage of the emotions of the public for each result, you have results that are not well-founded because, right now, you would have the emotions as they are in Salt Lake City and North America. ... If you made a phone call to Moscow, you would probably get a different answer."
Like, Da.
The controversy, which began when the Russians edged the Canadians Monday night despite a bobble in their long program, centers on whether judge Marie Reine Le Gougne of France swapped a favorable pairs vote for the promise of help from the Russian bloc in the upcoming ice dancing competition.
Having jumped a few journalistic fences in the process, Toronto's normally staid Globe and Mail reported Wednesday that the ice dancing outcome has already been fixed, directing trifecta players to the Italy-Russia-France combination. Canada will finish fifth in ice dancing, the paper reported as an added tip.
At their own press conference, Canadian officials indicated they would prefer the figure skating federation be investigated by someone other than the figure skating federation. Failing that _ and the suggestion will go nowhere _ the Canadians have filed an appeal of the judges' decision with the ISU. Unfortunately, what they have at the moment is buckets full of second-hand information and not a teaspoon of facts.
"The more evidence, the stronger the appeal," said Michael Chambers, the president of Canada's Olympic federation. "The more hearsay, the weaker the appeal."
With that established, it is clear little will happen. Sale and Pelletier are probably more popular now than if they had won the gold. Figure skating has attracted so much attention that people might actually watch the ice dancing competition. And the ISU and all its strange judging patterns will continue as before.
To be honest, if the second-place pairs team had been from Lithuania and unattractive, there wouldn't have been any press conferences yesterday. There wouldn't have been any outrage, any calls for changes, and Cinquanta could have enjoyed his lunch. But the unlucky couple was both adorable and the stuff of local controversy, so it became a big deal.
Now, if someone can just find that chain-smoking bottle-blonde with the kneecap pipe, we'll really have an Olympics that NBC can get excited about.
Bob Ford's e-mail address is bford(AT)phillynews.com.
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