David Pelletier, Jamie Salé, Anton Sikharulidze and Elena Berezhnaya.Photo: Tony Marshall/getty
Twenty years ago, two pairs — Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier, and Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze — faced off on Olympic ice in Salt Lake City, each couple hoping they’d stand atop the podium.
In a rare turn of events, both teamsdidtake home gold — but not before they were swept up in an Olympic controversy that captured the attention of international media and even federal investigators in both the U.S. and Europe.
“Skategate,” as it was called, remains to this day a catastrophe so public it forced a systemic overhaul that has reshaped the sport for all future competitors.
Figure skating has “changed dramatically since that night,” 1998 gold medalistTara Lipinskirecently told PEOPLE when discussing her Peacock docuseriesMeddling, which covers the 2002 scandal in depth. “That night is when figure skating sort of lost its innocence.”
“A Cold War on Ice”
However, Salé and Pelletier had emerged as serious contenders in the 1999–2000 season. With a string of wins ahead of the 2002 Olympics, they captured the attention of the Russians and their coach Tamara Moskvina.
“It was exciting,” men’s 1984 gold medalistScott Hamiltonand 2002 NBC commentator recalled inMeddling. “We weren’t rooting against anyone. It was just the excitement that pairs skating had gotten to that level outside Russia where, now, it was gonna be really competitive.”
Of course, the Olympics is always about more than the athletes themselves, and figure skating, in particular, had long played into a sense of national pride for the Russians.
“The Olympics is not only a competition between skaters, but this is [a] competition between countries,” coach Moskvina explained in the “Gold War” episode of Netflix’sBad Sport.
Unsettling Scores
At the root of it, what went wrong in 2002 centered on a scoring system that had been widely decried for years as being, at best, problematically subjective and, at worst, incestuously venal.
Scores had long been awarded in two categories — technical merit and artistic presentation — both of which had a maximum point value of 6.0. In cases of two closely competitive teams, like the Russians and Canadians were sure to be that year, the system gave heavier weight to presentation. And after all the scores were lodged, judges took the additional step of assigning each team an overall ranking.
“There was no real, intricate math about it, you just had to be able to keep track of your totals and keep track of everybody,” said CBC commentator Paul Martini inMeddling. “There was nothing quantitative about it at all. It was strictly based on a subjective opinion.”
This level of subjectivity coupled with the East-versus-West voting bloc mentality underpinning the competition led French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne to say inMeddlingthat she “immediately … felt this bad environment” when she touched down in Salt Lake City for the 2002 Olympics.
“I knew very well who would vote in favor of the Russians and who would vote in favor of the Canadians,” she toldReutersin 2018. “I was almost certain that I was the one who would award the Olympic title. What I feared would happen really did.”
Just a few days later, Le Gougne would find herself in the crosshairs of the world as the swing judge who triggered Skategate.
Marie-Reine Le Gougne.JACQUES DEMARTHON/getty
The Competition
As the two pairs readied for the final night of competition on Feb. 11, 2002, they each recognized they would have to turn in career-best performances to take home gold.
Or as Berezhnaya put it inMeddling, “Skaters are crazy people. If you don’t perform well, you consider yourself a failure.”
As warmups got underway, Salé caught sight of Sikharulidze across the rink. Perhaps she was preoccupied after she and Pelletier had fallen out of their final pose two nights before during the short program — it wasn’t technically an element, so no points were deducted, but it had begun to derail her hopes of a perfect, gold medal-winning run in Salt Lake City. They were in second place going into the free skate.
Whatever was going through Salé’s mind, she misjudged her position relative to Sikharulidze and broadsided him just minutes before the competition officially started.
“I heard 17,000 people gasp,” recalled Pelletier inMeddling, with Salé adding, “It just shocked the livin' bejeebus out of us.”
The Russians had barely time to think — they’d drawn the No. 2 performance slot that Monday night — and were soon back on the iceto skate to Jules Massenet’s"Meditation" from the operaThaïs.
Anton Sikharulidze and Elena Berezhnaya.Tony Marshall/getty
Early into the intricate, difficult routine, Salé toldBad Sportshe remembered “hearing the audience react to something.” She and Pelletier had chosen not to watch the Russians' routine because they were slated to skate next, but they couldn’t ignore that response. “I immediately thought, ‘Okay, they’ve made a mistake.’ "
“They were skating to not make a mistake, and you can’t do that,” said Martini. “You’ve got to skate to win.”
In all, the couple made three prominent (if relatively minor) errors, prompting Hamilton to call the performance “a bit forced, a bit tight” in his live commentary on NBC.
But they received high marks even with the deductions: 5.7s and 5.8s on technical merit, and 5.9s from seven of the nine judges in artistic presentation (Canada and Germany scored them 5.8).
Still, said Pelletier: “When you saw a 5.7, I knew they left the door open. And, you know, you tell yourself at that point, ‘With a perfect skate, [gold is] mine.’ "
Salé and Pelletier had chosento skate to the theme of the 1970s dramaLove Story. It was a well-received routine they’d perfected across several seasons — and perhaps most importantly, it brought the chemistry of the couple, who also were romantic partners off the ice, to the forefront.
“We were literally meant and born to skate together — soul mates on the ice,” said Salé inMeddling.
For the next four and half minutes, the Canadians skated virtually flawlessly.
David Pelletier and Jamie Salé.Peter Read Miller/getty
By all accounts, it was a less difficult routine than the Russians' long program, but “all the transitions were [so] seamless that you felt that they were skating on velvet,” said 2002 Canadian judge Benoit Lavoie.
“I think it’s what every athlete dreams of: getting to the Olympics and being perfect,” Salé recalled inBad Sport. “We figured, ‘We’ve got this in the bag.’ "
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After the routine, the couple shared a celebratory kiss and Pelletier even dropped down to jubilantly kiss the ice. The crowd rose in a standing ovation and began chanting, “6! 6! 6! 6!”
“It was impossible not to hear the roar, the shouting,” said Berezhnaya inBad Sport. “The stands were shaking. The building nearly collapsed.”
When Salé and Pelletier’s scores came up, they’d bested the Russians on technical merit, earning six scores of 5.8 and three 5.9s. And even though their five 5.8s and four 5.9s in artistic presentation technically trailed their rivals, they believed they’d done enough.
When it came time for the rankings, said Hamilton, “All hell broke loose.”
Five of the nine judges had given the Canadians a “2” ranking, including the woman widely regarded as the swing vote: Le Gougne.
“It was our night, and it’s like a lump in your throat, a kick in the gut — just hard to take,” said Salé inMeddling.
David Pelletier and Jamie Salé.JACQUES DEMARTHON/getty
The judges were “under terrible pressure,” Le Gougne toldReutersyears later. “When it was close we were pulling our hair out trying to rank skaters with only little two marks.”
The crowd instantly erupted into vocal disapproval as Brennan said, “Shock just swept over the arena.”
Lipinski told PEOPLE, “Everyone in the arena that night was shocked. There was booing, there was awww-ing. An educated skating fan or [even someone who was] not could tell that in that moment — the Canadians had that Olympic moment, had that Olympic skate, and felt that they won the night.”
In days to come, aneditorialin Canada’sNational Postwould issue a frosty condemnation: “The five men and women who deemed their performance second best to an elegant but identifiably flawed Russian pair … proved that many of the judges who evaluate Olympic figure skating events are—true to rumor and stereotype — either incompetent, biased, corrupt or, very possibly, all three.”
Said Martini, “Two teams gave their all. One performance took it to a new level. It was a great Olympic story — and you just threw it in the dumpster.”
Silver and Gold
At the medal ceremony that night, Salé struggled to suppress her tears as she and Pelletier accepted their silver medals and watched their competitors take the top step on the podium.
Depending on who is telling the story, rumors of a fix started swirling some time after the ceremony and before the judges reconvened the next day. But one thing was certain: Le Gougne was crumbling under the pressure.
Sally Anne Stapleford, the chairperson of the Figure Skating Technical Committee from 1992–2002, said inBad Sportthat Le Gougne confessed to her at the hotel that night: “It was just streaming out of her. I [didn’t] know what to make of it. Never seen a judge so wrought-up and tense and emotional.”
The next morning, per Olympic protocol, the judges were called into a meeting to defend their scores. The American judge is said to have read a letter calling the previous night’s result a “disgrace” and “dishonest.”
“It was very tense, very tense in that room,” said Lavoie inBad Sport. “You could hear a pin drop. People were crying, people didn’t know what to say, people felt betrayed. And then Marie-Reine said these words: ‘It’s all Didier’s fault.’ "
Didier Gailhaguet.Frederic Stevens/Getty
As president of the French Skating Federation, Didier Gailhaguet had the power to choose which judges attended the major skating events. This post as the presiding member of figure skating’s “old boys' club,” made him “kind of like a puppeteer,” according to Brennan.
Canadian skating judge Jean Senft — who’d been entangled in a judging scandal at the Nagano Olympics when she blew the whistle on a failed quid pro quo arrangement — described Gailhaguet inMeddlingas a “clever man, incredibly savvy — but one who would make deals with presidents of other federations and then would pressure his judges to vote the way that he wanted it to go.”
In the judges' meeting on Feb. 12, Le Gougne claimed Gailhaguet had directed her to rank the Russians first. But almost as quickly as she made the accusation, she retracted it.
Once she lawyered up, Le Gougne explained her changing story: “Given my emotional state, I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down for a dozen hours, and I was no longer myself. This led me to say what they wanted me to say.”
And inMeddling, nearly 20 years later, she continued to insist that Gailhaguet had expressed to her he “wouldpreferthat I vote in favor of the Russian pair” but hadn’t swayed her actions.
For his part, Gailhaguet claimed at the time that it didn’t make sense for France to be involved in any sort of score-fixing scheme because they had no competitors in pairs figure skating.
Nonetheless, with the whiff of conspiracy in the air, the Canadian delegation demanded a formal investigation, and Salé and Pelletier were given marching orders to blitz American media as high-profile talk show hosts includingJay Leno,Rosie O’Donnell, andLarry Kingtook up their fight.
Skategate Unravels
While International Skating Union (ISU) President Ottavio Cinquanta resisted taking official action because he’d only received “allegation, accusation, not proof,” investigators from several parts of the globe coalesced to get to the alleged source of the scoring mishap.
The month before the Olympics, according toESPN, Italy’s Guardia di Finanza had tapped the phone of an Uzbekistan-born Russian mafia figure named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.
According to FBI agent Bill McCausland, an expert in Russian Eurasian organized crime, “Tokhtakhounov [was] involved in human trafficking, arms dealing, drug trafficking, all types of grifts across Europe. And there were conversations with a Russian co-conspirator that were a bit unusual.”
The Italians passed the recordings to the FBI: “Armed with those phone calls, we were able to identify that bribery had taken place there — a crime that sort of strikes at the heart of the integrity of sports.”
Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov.U.S. Attorney South District of New York/Getty
According to ESPN, future FBI Director and then-U.S. AttorneyJames Comeysaid in a press conference at the time that Tokhtakhounov had “arranged a classic quid pro quo.”
Brennan explained inBad Sport: “The French needed that Russian vote for ice dancing, and the Russians needed the French vote for pairs [figure skating]. ‘You vote for ours, we’ll vote for yours.’ It was corrupt, it was wrong, it was terrible, but it was simple.”
The alleged plan obviously encountered a major hiccup. Yet even though French ice dancers Gwendal Peizerat and Marina Anissina (who was born in Russia) encountered unprecedented scrutiny due to Skategate, they still won gold in Salt Lake City — without a first-place ranking from the Russian judge.
Gwendal Peizerat and Marina Anissina.Tony Marshall/getty
Shared Success?
Days after the pairs ice skating finals, a call had still not been made on the results in question.
Since Pelletier believed there was “0% chance” the original results would change, he and Salé remained gracious, repeatedly telling the media, “Anton and Yelena are our friends.”
Away from cameras, they grew concerned about the narrative that was crystallizing. “You realized after a while the angle is ‘us against the Russians,’ " he said inMeddling. “[You felt like,] ‘Hey, hey, whoa, whoa! Put on the brakes.’ It’s got nothing to do with the skaters. We were thrown in it.”
Berezhnaya agreed, saying, “It felt like someone created a script and we were actors in it.”
On Feb. 15, the ISU made its decision: Le Gougne’s vote would be voided, meaning each team had four first-place votes and they would be both be awarded gold medals.
While Berezhnaya wryly said “the USA won the war” inMeddlingand called the resolution “world peace” inBad Sport, Sikharulidze was more pragmatic.
“If IOC say, ‘There’s going to be no gold medal,’ this is taken from us,” he said inMeddling. “But if they say, ‘There’s going to be four gold medals for all of you guys,’ let’s do it. That’s cool.”
For the Canadians, an after-the-fact “victory” was bittersweet.
“We were so proud of ourselves and we had so much support from around the world that it really didn’t almost matter at that point,” Salé said inMeddling.
In 2002, according toPEOPLE, when the two pairs finally met up again just moments before their shared gold-medal ceremony on Feb. 17, David said, “Wow, Anton. I am so tired.” Anton replied, “I’m so tired too.”
After the Canadians gifted the Russians two crystal hearts, Salé grabbed Berezhnaya’s hand as the four skaters stepped up together to the top of the podium.
“We were all smiling and everybody was doing the best that we could with the situation that we were in,” Salé admitted inBad Sport, “but it was just really uncomfortable.”
Added Pelletier inMeddling, “We were puppets in a show.”
From Lipinski’s perspective, “All four of these skaters were cheated out of an Olympic moment.”
She toldUSA Today, “It doesn’t matter that there were two gold medals, and they’re both called Olympic champions [now]. They all feel they’ll never get that Olympic experience back, and that’s sad.”
As the Russian and Canadian flags were raised, a single tear ran down Moskvina’s face.
Tamara Moskvina.netflix
What Came Next…
Le Gougne, who revealed inMeddlingshe hadn’t been in a rink since 2010, said she had attempted suicide in the weeks following the scandal. “My life was devastated,” told Reuters in 2018. “I simply didn’t want to live anymore.”
Salé and Pelletiermarriedin December 2005,welcomed a sonin September 2007, and separated in March 2009, even as they continued to skate together until they announced they retirement in 2012. They happily co-parent, communicate daily, and even occasionally hit the ice together.
Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, who had also been romantic off and on in the years leading up to the 2002 Olympics, announced their retirement in May 2003 and went their separate ways.
“Figuring skating, it’s a game for young guys,” said Sikharulidze inMeddling. “It’s not a war.”
Torching the Rankings
For the sport itself, the aftermath of what went wrong in Salt Lake City has had enduring consequences.
“I think this event tarnished figure skating,” Lipinski toldUSA Today, “because who wants to tune in to a competition that might be rigged?”
Speaking with PEOPLE, she noted, “It was finally an opening for someone to really investigate and obviously find out what [had] been going on for a long time in the sport.”
Today, the scores for all ice skaters and dancers, both singles and pairs, start at 0. Their points are based on the amount and difficulty of their elements, with more points awarded in the back half of the routine (when skaters' legs are fatigued). Now athletes, coaches and choreographers strategically map out programs to demonstrate both ability and ambition, with artistry often taking a backseat to power.
“There’s now a technical score and an artistic score like before, but everything a skater is doing is accounted for — every step, jump, spin, even the artistic score,” Lipinski explained to PEOPLE. “It closes the gap and the room for subjective judging, and it gives the judges direct criteria and a protocol to follow.”
She toldUSA Today, “Because of that scandal,everythinghas been changed.”
To learn more about Team USA, visitTeamUSA.org. Watch the Winter Olympics, now, and the Paralympics, beginning March 4, on NBC.
source: people.com
