Ice dancers benefit from infamous French scandal

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Fri Dec 09 2011
BY STEVE MILTON

QUEBEC CITY Nine weeks from now figure skating will celebrate — oh, so such an inappropriate verb — the 10th anniversary of its greatest infamy.

Technically, the “French judge” scandal of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics occurred in the pairs competition, eventually resulting in a second set of gold medals awarded to Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.

But the genesis of the crime, allegedly and almost surely, was a trade-off for a pro-France vote by Russia in the dance competition a few days later.

So it is only fitting that the discipline most affected by skating’s radical scoring change that was fast-tracked because of Salt Lake, is that very ice dancing division.

For one thing, ice dancing is infinitely more watchable now than it was in the pre-Salt Lake days, when it was essentially a schlock theme party. Wild costuming, inexplicable histrionics, and melodrama as thin as Jersey Shore were the rule rather than the exception.

Dancing, always the weird kid on the block, has been forced to accept the same incentives and limits as the other three disciplines: the compulsories were finally ditched, every moment on the ice is analyzed and compared to a finite standard; and judging subjectivity, the romper room of chronic cheaters, was severely reduced.

The result was almost immediate: a dramatic shift in power and demographics that is in full blossom at the Grand Prix Final here.