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American Morning

Canadian Olympic Officials Suggesting Second Gold Medal be Given to Canadian Team

Aired February 14, 2002 - 07:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Back to Olympic controversies. A full- blown Olympics scandal on ice with charges of collusion and calls for an independent review of the judging that gave the Russians a gold in pairs figure skating and left the Canadians holding the silver. Well, Canadian Olympic officials are now suggesting a second gold medal be given to the Canadian team.

Carol Lin joins us now from Salt Lake City with more on that -- good morning, Carol.

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

Yes, the Canadians feel like they've got a pretty good chance at this, though it's never been done before. And what they are saying is the reason why they didn't file an appeal earlier in the process during this week is because they didn't feel they had enough basis. Well, now they feel they do, though they won't go into any of those details.

What they're saying is they're working out the legal details with their lawyer and they are filing a formal appeal with the ISU. This is history, Paula.

ZAHN: Meanwhile, an internal investigation goes on, right? And we won't find out much more about that until next week?

LIN: No, there's a meeting -- you're right. There's a meeting on Monday with the International Skating Union where they are going to get all 11 members together in Salt Lake City to review this. But the fact of the matter is very little is expected out of this so-called internal review. Essentially what happened is an American referee -- there's a process here where when there's a dispute a referee steps in. This time it was a referee that is American who apparently felt that there were some irregularities and the American referee filed this complaint with the ISU. So the Committee is going to be revealing it on Monday.

But they say they don't have the authority to actually change the decision so -- in terms of who gets the gold and who gets the silver. So there's a lot of confusion about that -- Paula.

ZAHN: Yes, and the challenge, of course, is it's now come down to he said/she said when it comes to allegations of vote swapping. All right, Carol, and we're going to leave it there. See you in our next hour. Thank you.

LIN: OK, we'll have more.

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