Artistry at Root of Latest Controversy
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Figure skating has yet to begin at the Winter Olympics, and already strange things are happening. O.K., not as strange as Lindsey Vonn wrapping her ailing shin with Austrian cheese curd, but strange nonetheless.
The cold war ended two decades ago, except somebody forgot to tell the people involved in figure skating. The East German judges are long gone, the Soviet bloc has been dismantled, but obsession, paranoia and conspiracy still rule. If skating didn’t exist, Robert Ludlum would have invented it.
“This sport is so political, nobody trusts anybody,” said George Rossano, an American expert on the arcane and controversial points-based scoring system.
The latest controversy centers on Yevgeny Plushenko, the defending Olympic men’s champion from Russia. He retired, then made a comeback for Vancouver, where he is favored to win a second gold medal. There is no better leaper in the world. Plushenko jumps like a teenager at a horror movie.
He is also fast and calm under pressure. And in the words of Dick Button, the 1948 and 1952 Olympic champion, “He has enough chutzpah to fill the Grand Canyon.”
Still, there are drawbacks to Plushenko’s skating: footwork and artistry. This is a guy who could use a few lessons at Arthur Murray. It was the same problem that Tom DeLay had on “Dancing With the Stars.” Both men have terrific charisma, but would be well advised in the future to avoid rhinestones, bolero jackets and the cha-cha.
Plushenko freely admits this flaw in the transitional moves — footwork, choreography and musicality — that link his soaring triple axels and quadruple toe loops. At a news conference last month, referring to himself and Brian Joubert of France, Plushenko said, “We don’t have any transitions, because we focus on our jumps.”
He also suggested that judges could prop up skaters under the new scoring system, just as in the old 6-point system, by inflating their “component” scores, the equivalent of the old artistic marks. This added to the suspicion by some that exaggerated artistic marks were given to Plushenko at the recent Russian and European championships.
Joe Inman, an influential American judge who helped write the rules for component scores, passed along Plushenko’s remarks in an e-mail message to friends, including some fellow judges. The e-mails were detailed in The Globe and Mail of Toronto. In them, Inman wrote that despite Plushenko’s admission of weakness in transitions, “The judges seem to miss what he is saying.”
Inman also wrote, “We as judges should think about what we saw before putting that mark down.”
In a telephone interview Thursday, Inman, who is not a judge at these Games, said he was not trying to influence the outcome of the men’s competition at the Vancouver Olympics.
“It was innocuous,” he said. “I wasn’t telling people how to judge.”
Except that is not how his remarks were interpreted by the Russians and the French, who detected a full-blown North American conspiracy against European skaters.
Perhaps Inman should have known better. If there is a chance to twist words in this sport, they will be contorted like a skater’s body during a Biellmann spin.
Didier Gailhaguet, the president of the French figure skating federation, told the sports newspaper L’Equipe, “This proves the North American lobby is under way.”
The Russians were also not happy that DVDs, used this season to train judges about proper and improper skating techniques, included video of Plushenko from the 2006 Winter Olympics and harsh comments about his artistry.
It did nothing to calm the fear of conspiracy that American and Canadian officials helped make the DVDs. At the Russians’ behest, USA Today reported, Plushenko was removed from the video, like an out-of-favor Politburo member airbrushed from viewing-stand photos at a May Day parade.
The men’s short program begins Tuesday, but what is happening off the ice might be more engaging than whatever will happen on the ice. Plushenko is not talking; he did not even bother to show up for practice Friday. But everybody else is speaking his mind, often dyspeptically and hilariously.
Button called The New York Times to say that Gailhaguet of France had a lot of nerve to complain about a supposed North American conspiracy. After all, Gailhaguet was barred from skating for three years, accused of conspiring to manipulate the pairs and ice dancing competitions at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics.
“He’s an international manipulator himself,” Button said. “I wouldn’t believe a word he said if you removed all his blood and replaced it with truth serum.”
Gailhaguet did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for an interview.
Geopolitical lines have blurred. Some Americans are criticizing other Americans. Johnny Weir, competing in his second Olympic Games for the United States, has a Russian coach and is enamored of all things Russian. He said Friday that Inman “put egg on my face” and “tarnished my reputation” by seeming to try to influence the judging.
And, oh yeah, he wants Inman barred for life as a judge.
“As much as we make about the judging scandal in Salt Lake City, that it’s not American, that we don’t do things like that, this shows we are just like anybody else,” Weir said.
Odd things are happening all around. A wild lynx has been spotted on the downhill course and near the luge track in recent days. Perhaps it was on the run, desperate to avoid becoming part of Weir’s costume for the free skate.