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Remember Ice Skating?
March 29, 2002
by John Bloom
NEW YORK, March 29 (UPI) -- Quick. For ten points. Who is
Marie Reine Le Gougne?
a) The new chef at Le Cirque.
If you said "the bipolar French ice skating judge," then
you're either an extremely astute reader of agate type or you
live in Europe. This confused lady dropped off the media radar
after the International Skating Union took the historic step of
publicly suspending her and then awarding a second gold medal in
the Olympics pairs skating competition back in February.
The reason I bring up her name now is that she hasn't been
quiet and she hasn't been idle, but even NBC--the TV network that
was so livid over the judging that they hammered her reputation
into dust for a full week--hasn't seen fit to follow up the
story.
The first odd twist in the Marie Reine Le Gougne saga
occurred exactly one week after the Canadians were awarded their
gold medal for whining and complaining. The New York Times, which
had been way ahead on this story throughout the controversy,
published a front-page interview with Le Gougne on the very day
of the Olympic closing ceremonies. The article by Selena Roberts
and Michael Janofsky was based on a two-hour session with Le
Gougne and her lawyer in which she told her story in detail for
the first time.
Did you see this amazing interview discussed on NBC's final-
night coverage? You did not. Did any of the Canadian-loving
columnists who had cried "foul" alter their opinions after this
interview was published? They did not.
But Le Gougne was suddenly quite adamant in her telling of
the story. "Marie Reine Le Gougne," wrote the Times, "said the
pressure she felt was unlike any in her 14 years of judging, that
it intensified as the Olympics drew near and that it came from
only one country, Canada." The Times went on to say that the
reporters had interviewed two other figure skating officials who,
"speaking on condition of anonymity," believed Le Gougne's
version of events.
Fast-forward another week to Le Gougne's press conference in
Paris, details of which dribbled back to America because
apparently none of our networks sent a camera crew. She told her
story again, this time backed up by Didier Gailhaguet, President
of the French Federation.
Add this to an extensive interview she gave to L'Equipe, the
French sports newspaper, and you end up with what is not a complete
version of events, but one that is about one thousand times more complete than what was used to decide the awarding of
the second medal. If you'll recall, Ottavio Cinquanta, president
of the International Skating Union, had initially refused to do
anything to change the results until his full committee had a
chance to meet and investigate. But a media frenzy pursued him
everywhere, with reporters basically saying "You need to act now,
so that we can get back to the other Olympic events"--why they
couldn't just wait was unclear--and eventually International
Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge told Cinquanta that he
couldn't wait, he had to act.
Does anybody in North America care whether they acted correctly
or not? Probably not, at this point, but it is possible
now to string together a sort of what-if version of events that,
at the very least, ought to make more than a few Olympic
officials ashamed of themselves. There's another chapter yet to
come, on April 29 and 30, when the ISU will have a formal hearing
to decide whether Le Gougne's suspension will become permanent.
(Note that the purpose of the hearing is not to determine whether
the awarding of the second medal was the correct call. That would
be way too dangerous. It's the equivalent of an ice-skating court
martial for Le Gougne, after a two-month investigation, and the
sole charge is that she "failed to report pressure." In other
words, she's a goner.)
But here's the background of the case. First, there are so
many international skating competitions that the judges see the
same performers over and over again, not just during competition
but at rehearsals. There are usually at most four contenders for
any gold medal at any given time, and the jockeying among those
four determines the shape of the politics. In last year's pairs
figure skating, it was obvious that the two heavyweight teams
were the Canadians and Russians. They were a cut above everyone
else. And heading into the Olympics, France was considered the
"swing" country in the voting. This had nothing to do with Le
Gougne. France simply has historic ties to both Canada and Russia.
In September 2001, the Olympic judges were named, and Le
Gougne's name turned up on the list. Suddenly she was popular
with Canadian ice skating officials who had never even spoken to
her before. Is that pressure? Probably not. But the interesting
thing about her story is that there were no Russians trying to
influence her.
Partly that's because the Canadians are more powerful than
the Russians, so they're just around more. The most powerful ISU
body, the technical committee, is run by Sally Stapleford, a
British citizen who's the daughter of a famous Canadian hockey
player, Red Stapleford. The official ISU seminars on how to judge
"presentation"--the key mark in judging--are led by Anne
Schelter, a Canadian choreographer, and Lori Nichol, an American
who works with Sale and Pelletier, the Canadian team.
In other words, Le Gougne says there are Canadians and
friends of Canadians everywhere you turn in skating. So she got
smiles from Canadians, pats on the back from Canadians, hugs from
Canadians, and apparently she's one of those super-sensitive
nervous types who was agonizing about it. Did it mean something?
Do they want my vote or do they just like me? All of this in a
context of dealing with the people who have power to determine
whether she gets judging jobs in the future--and this lady was crazy
about being a skating judge.
The key moment, she says, was the night before the pairs
competition began. The Canadian judge, Benoit Lavoie, invited her
to a birthday party for a Polish judge of ice dancing who was a
close friend of the Polish judge of pairs. (Are you following
this?) The Canadians proceeded to shower the ice dancing judge
with gifts, which made Le Gougne not only uncomfortable but
nervous about her own position. If they're that determined to get
votes, she thought, what will happen if I don't vote for them?
All this time, Le Gougne is sharing her misgivings with her
"boss," French Federation president Didier Gailhaguet.
Gailhaguet's personality is the opposite of Le Gougne's. He's a
worldly Frenchman with typical Continental cynicism and he said
things to her to comfort her. We don't know what he said, but it
was probably something like, "Screw the Canadians. Just do your
job."
Now this can be interpreted in two ways. It can be
interpreted as, "Punish the Canadians," and it can be interpreted
as, "The Canadians are being silly." But saying it brusquely to a
woman like Le Gougne could set off another agonizing period of
sleepless nights. This is the kind of woman who constantly asks
herself, "I wonder what he means. I wonder what they're
thinking."
Nevertheless, when it came time for the final vote, Le
Gougne cast her vote for the Russians--very narrowly, one-tenth
of a point--and felt, "Okay, thank God, that's over." She even
said she had a "warm" feeling, because she'd done the right
thing.
But it wasn't over. Before she even left the arena, she was physically
attacked. Not enough to harm her, but she was grabbed.
It wasn't a fellow judge, thank God. It was probably just some
crazed ice-skating fan. But she was obviously shaken.
She got on the shuttle bus to return to her hotel. Walburga
Grimm, a member of the technical committee, then verbally abused
her for her voting, implying that there was something dishonest
about it.
When she got to the hotel, she was accosted again, this time
by Sally Stapleford, the aforementioned head of the powerful
technical committee. In the lobby, Stapleford "aggressively
approached" Le Gougne--who had just been attacked twice, once
physically and once verbally--and said, "Marie, you're a very,
very good judge. Why did you score the Russians first?"
It's just the kind of question you're not supposed to ask.
Le Gougne broke into tears. Stapleford was horrified by the tears
and thought it was a tacit admission of guilt. She then started
peppering Le Gougne with scenarios of why she might have voted
that way. Who pressured her? Obviously she's upset, she's crying,
she knows something, there had to have been pressure. Was it the
French Federation? Did they make a deal with the Russians so they
would get a favorable vote in ice dancing?
Then two other people joined the emotional dogpile. Walburga
Grimm, the accuser on the bus, showed up in the lobby along with
Britta Lindgren, another member of the technical committee.
Stapleford told THEM the scenario of the French-Russian
conspiracy while Le Gougne continued to blubber.
The next morning Le Gougne, already emotionally worn out,
turns on the TV and sees herself on CNN. "How can this be?" she
said, horrified. Then she goes to one of the regular meetings of
judges. Halfway through that meeting, Ron Pfenning, an American
who is the referee in the pairs competition, passes a note to the
nine judges, suggesting that there was "dishonesty" in the
previous evening's judging and calling for them to come clean.
(Pfenning got his information from Stapleford.)
"That word, dishonest, destroyed me," said Le Gougne, and
once again she broke down in tears.
At this point the story gets murky. This is where Pfenning
supposedly got the "confession" that was the basis for changing
the judges' decision and awarding the second medal. But the
essence of it is that Pfenning demanded to know whether she had
been pressured to vote a certain way, and she said that yes, she
had been pressured. That was all he needed. He had her sign a
statement to that effect, and her fate was sealed.
"I was so mixed up in my mind," she told the Times, "I had
trouble thinking properly."
When she finally did start defending herself--with the help
of an outraged Gailhaguet--it was too late. The Olympic officials
had already made up their minds. They had their smoking gun. And
if you ask Gailhaguet what he thinks about it, he'll tell you
that some "very bad people" browbeat a fragile woman until they
got what they wanted. It was the first time in the whole history
of ice skating that a decision has been reversed or amended.
But not the last. America didn't much notice, because NBC
wasn't there, but the World Championships were held in Nagano,
Japan, just three weeks after the Olympics. When the bronze medal
in ice dancing went to Israel, almost all the other skaters
signed a petition protesting the decision, and Lithuania, the
fourth-place team, filed a formal protest--two more firsts in
international skating competition.
It was the Marie Reine La Gougne legacy, already at work.
© Copyright 2002
United Press International and John Bloom
b) The 14th-century patron saint of Lyon.
c) The bipolar French ice skating judge.