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American Morning

Olympic Skating Controversy Heading to Court

Aired February 15, 2002 - 07:05   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: This morning the Olympic skating controversy heats up and is now heading to court, the court of arbitration for sports. And after an urgent appeal was filed late yesterday by the Canadians, the normally secretive International Sports Tribunal agreed to hold a hearing today in Salt Lake City.

And in their first broadcast appearance since Monday's competition, the Russian skating pair said last night on Larry King Live they feel confident the gold is rightfully theirs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Right now we're feeling much better because when we look again at how skating we feel we are, we are winner and we are deserved the gold medals and we are so happy about our medals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Well, she went on to say someone has to win, somebody has to lose, that's the rules. Well, not everybody, of course, has the same view.

And CNN's Carol Lin is standing by in Salt Lake City to bring us the very latest on this ongoing controversy -- good morning, Carol.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Paula.

Yes, you're just getting a taste of the court of public opinion here, which is being held even before the International Skating Union gets a chance to meet on Monday. And what so many people are saying is that two things should happen. Number one, the Canadians should either get a second gold, that they should throw out the French judges' scoring and take the 10th alternate judge's score, which would give it 5-4 to the Canadians. So either take the gold away from the Russians and give it to the Canadians or give two Gold Medals.

The ISU, the International Skating Union, is the body that is standing in the way of any sort of decision. What it is saying is still no evidence of corruption of judges. They're going to have this hearing on Monday. But the bottom line is that they don't want to admit publicly at this point, unless they have a huge smoking gun, that there is a culture of cheating in skating. Everyone you talk to here involved in international figure skating, from the youngest to the most senior members, are saying that this is a culture of cheating, it is insidious in the system and that the International Skating Union doesn't want to admit this fully on the world stage. They want to consider it case by case.

ZAHN: Well, Carol, there certainly has got to be a great deal of concern that this doesn't become known as the Olympics of the fix or the lawyers' games. But isn't that exactly what's happening?

LIN: That is exactly what's happening. The Canadians have hired attorneys. The referee, the American referee who has brought this complaint before the ISU has an attorney, the French judge has an attorney. She has allegedly left Salt Lake City to try to escape the media glare. And now the Canadian skating pair is considering its legal options, as well.

So a lot of people don't want to talk publicly about this because their lawyers are saying be very careful here. We have to go through the ISU rules line by line to find the exception here.

ZAHN: Let's talk a little bit about highlights from last night's competition. It kept a lot of us up way too late.

LIN: Yes, way, too late. Boy, did you see the men's competition last night on figure skating?

ZAHN: I did. I, yes, I stayed up way past the bedtime last night. But they were fantastic. I mean they were faces that we've been familiar with for years -- Todd Eldredge, Elvis Stojko, Michael Weiss.

LIN: Yes. Yes. Eric Stoika did not have a really terrific night and Todd Eldredge, the senior statesman of the U.S. team, has decided to hang up his skates. But last night we saw an amazing performance by all three winners, the gold medal winner, a Russian; the silver medal winner, a Russian; and, of course, American Timothy Goebel, who skied tremendously. I mean he is the first to land three quads in an Olympic performance but that wasn't quite good enough. It earned him the bronze.

But the star of the show last night was Alexei Yagudin, who is a three time world champion. And he got four perfect 6.0s for presentation alone. I mean people, where I was watching it in this restaurant, people were stomping their feet. They were cheering. They were crying. And I'm talking about an international audience in this bar of Americans and people from around the world who were just stunned by this performance.

The standard is getting higher and higher and higher, Paula, in terms of how many quads and how much perfection people have to land in these competitions.

ZAHN: Yes, the medallists were spectacular. But I think there were, there was a part of America rooting for these American Olympians who knew this would, they would be making their last appearance at the Olympics.

LIN: Yes, you bet. ZAHN: And, like you said, Elvis didn't skate so well. But I thought Todd Eldredge pulled off a nice routine there last night.

LIN: He did.

ZAHN: All right, Carol, we're going to see you in our next hour. Yes, thanks.

LIN: All right, thanks, Paula.

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