The Russians are now blaming the
American referee: [quote]An Olympic figure skating judge from Russia slammed U.S. referee Ron Pfenning at a Moscow news conference yesterday, alleging he pressed judges to vote for Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier in the pairs event at the Salt Lake Games.
Salé and Pelletier finished second in both the short and long programs and won the silver medal behind Russians Elena Berezhnaia and Anton Sikharulidze.
However, after French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne claimed, at first, that her federation pressed her to vote for the Russians, the Canadians were awarded duplicate gold medals.
Russian judge Marina Sanaia said that Pfenning staked his claim for the Canadians at a routine pre-event briefing in Salt Lake City. "Pfenning demanded the referees should not award Russia's pair . . . marks higher than 5.8," Sanaia told reporters. "It was completely against the International Skating Union's regulations."
Sanaia said rules were broken again during the short program, when Salé and Pelletier fell during their final pose. The pair eventually got back up, jokingly replayed the final pose and took their bows.
But Sanaia says they did not finish within the allotted time of 2 minutes 40 seconds. "I looked at the stopwatch immediately after the Canadian pair fell down," she said. "It was not counting time any more. Later, we checked the Canadian pair's timing. It was 13 seconds over the regular time."
In other words, Sanaia figured the clock should not have stopped until after Salé and Pelletier jokingly played out their final pose after their tumble. If so, she said, they should have lost .2 marks for both technical merit and presentation and therefore would have finished in fourth place in the short program, rather than third.
"If everything had been done according to the ISU regulations, the Canadian pair would have had no shot at Olympic gold after the short program," said the judge, who attended her fourth Olympic Games.
Sanaia said Pfenning was biased toward the Canadians from the beginning. "He broke all the rules and regulations to make the Canadians the Olympic winners," she said. "He was the man who provoked the scandal that followed."
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