SALT LAKE CITY (voa) – A judge in Monday’s controversial Olympic pairs skating competition has been accused of wrongdoing by the official who reviewed the event with the judges afterward.
The president of the International Skating Union says American Ronald Pfenning, the “referee” who led the review panel, made the charge about an as yet unnamed judge, after the gold medal was presented to Russian skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze over Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.
That decision drew immediate howls of protest from the crowd and expressions of shock from television commentators who thought the Canadians were far more technically correct.
The International Skating Union president, Ottavio Cinquanta, did not reveal the nature of the allegations against the judge, but said he has received a denial. Earlier, Mr. Cinquanta said the skating union was doing an “internal assessment” to see if judges at the event followed proper rules and procedures, but he said their ruling would not be overturned. Now, the skating union says it will review the written charge against the judge next Monday.
Meanwhile, Norway’s Kjetil Andrew Aamodt has won the gold medal in men’s alpine combined skiing, Bode Miller of the United States took the silver and Benjamine Raich of Austria won the bronze.
Kati Wilhelm of Germany won gold in the women’s 7.5 kilometer sprint biathalon. Wilhelm was perfect on the shooting range and covered the race course in 20 minutes, 41.4 seconds. Fellow German Uschi Disl took the silver and Magdalena Forsberg of Sweden won the bronze. In other competition Wednesday, two athletes won their second gold medals at these Winter Olympics. Switzerland’s Simon Amman won the individual K-120 ski jump and defending champion Ole Einar Bjoerndalen of Norway took the 10 kilometer sprint biathlon.
On Sunday, the 20-year-old Amman won the individual K-90 Ski jump. He is only the second person to win both individual ski jumps at the same Olympics. Bjoerndalen won the 20 kilometer biathlon Monday.
In Wednesday’s ski jump, Adam Malysz of Poland won silver and Matti Hautamaeki won the bronze. In the biathlon, Sven Fischer of Germany took silver and Wolfgang Perner of Austria took bronze.
