Here We Go Again....

Figure skating, a sport that has long faced serious credibility problems over its judging, appears to be on the cusp of another scandal.
French publication L’Equipe has reported that the United States and Russia have struck a deal to mutually assure higher marks for their countries, while also shutting out Canada from the gold.

The allegation implies the pact would see the U.S. judge dish out favourable marks to Russia in the team event, where the U.S. is not a contender for the podium, in exchange for the Russian judge boosting the scores for Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White in the ice dance.
The pact, if true, would essentially lock down gold for each country in those events, while also blocking Canadian ice dancers Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir from repeating their gold medal performance at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

The possibility of another high profile judging scandal – especially one involving Canada – raises the odour of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics where Canadian pairs team Jamie Sale and David Pelletier lost the gold to Russia’s Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze amid a series of puzzling scores for presentation and technical merit.

French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne later revealed she had been pressured by French figure skating officials to award the Russians high marks, in exchange for similar treatment for France’s ice dance team.

Sale and Pelletier were eventually awarded a duo gold along with the Russians, but figure skating was irrevocably tainted in the eyes of fans and sponsors. The sport would spend several years being dragged through the mud in the headlines – including the arrest of a Russian mobster who was accused of organizing the scandal, though he was never charged.

Figure skating has attempted to clean up its problems since then by revamping the scoring system in an effort to make the judging more objective. Among the changes, marks are now anonymous under a so-called “blind judging” system designed to prevent specific judges from being exposed to pressure. And when final scores are tabulated, the highest and lowest marks are dropped, in order to weed out heavily inflated scores, or unusually low marks.

However, there are questions as to whether the new system has done what was intended. Critics of the new method argue the anonymous judging system actually reduces transparency on figure skating judging, making it impossible to know which judges potentially juice their scores.
In a sport considered to be one of the most glamorous at the Olympics, even a fraction of a point, can be the difference between gold or silver.

The scandal unfolds as Virtue and Moir are set to face off against Davis and White Saturday night in Sochi in the ice dance segment of the team event. The individual ice dance short program will be skated Sunday Feb. 16 and the long program will be on Monday Feb. 17.