Olympic Figure Skating: Controversies Through The Years

As the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games come to a close, we applaud the elite athletes from around the globe, their abilities proven by the sheer fact that they were qualified to compete in the Games. However, as we lift some up to a podium of glory, we must also remember those who walked away from the Games with dissatisfaction.

The competitors - as well as the spectators - of figure skating seem prone to this trope, with its notorious history of intrigue, bias, and lack of sportsmanship. One of the most famous incidents revolving around this sport, dubbed the most memorable event in figure skating history by HuffPost, dates back to 1994.

In 1991, Tonya Harding, a professional skater, became the first U.S. woman ever to execute the triple axel during the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Minneapolis, where she is also crowned national champion. She also became the first U.S. woman to execute the same move at an international event - the 1991 World Championships in Munich.

The following year, another athlete of the sport, Nancy Kerrigan, won bronze at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, while Harding finished fourth.

Two years later, while heading to Detroit for the 1994 U. S. Figure Skating Championships, Harding told the media, “I’m going to go up there and kick some butt.” Two days after the statement, a man later identified as Shane Stant whacked Kerrigan on her right leg after her practice, an injury which forced Kerrigan to drop out of the U.S. Championships, which Harding won two days later. The U.S. Figure Skating Association (USFSA) granted Kerrigan a spot on the national team despite her injury. In a news clip of Kerrigan following the incident, she could be heard saying “Why? Why? Why? Why me?” through tears.

However, in an interview days after, Kerrigan claimed to be counting her blessings: “That was one bad guy and I’m sure there’s others. These kinds of things happened before in other sports, but not everybody’s like that. And most people are worried about me and wondering what happened. Those are the people I want to tell that I’m OK. That’s not the most important thing, skating. If I can’t [skate], I’ll deal with it. I’m OK. It could have been a lot worse.” In another interview in 2017, she said, “I was hit right above my kneecap, if I was hit just a little below, my kneecap would have been shattered, just a little above, the whole muscle would have been calcified… I had no idea how bad it was, I had on slacks. My knee could fill the slack. I couldn’t walk on it for a couple weeks. It was very traumatic.”

In the same year, following the Championships, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation on Harding’s bodyguard, Shawn Eckhardt, and her husband, Jeff Gillooly, after a Portland minister, Eugene Saunders, claimed to have heard a tape of the two discussing “the hit” with Stant, played for him by Eckhardt, as The Oregonian reported at the time.

The following day, Eckhardt confessed to the FBI, implicating Gillooly, Stant, and Derreck Smith, who drove the getaway car. Eckhardt and Smith were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree assault. The same week, Stant turned himself into the FBI in Phoenix and was charged with conspiring to assault Kerrigan. Gillooly turned himself into the FBI after an arrest warrant is issued. Harding denied any involvement in Kerrigan’s attack, maintaining that she was sleeping when she found out about the incident, and that she feared a similar attack on her.

According to a 2013 Bleacher Report story about the attack, the original plan had been for Stant to “slice” Kerrigan’s Achilles tendon. “Stant said no. He wouldn’t cut anybody,” according to the report. “They settled on injuring the person enough so she could not skate.”

Approximately a week after Gillooly’s arrest, Gillooly confessed to the FBI, implicating himself, Eckhardt, Smith, Stant, and Harding. At a press conference at the Multnomah County Athletic Club in Portland, Harding admitted that she had failed to tell authorities about what she had known about the attack but maintained that she had not had a role in it. “I had no part in the planned assault on Nancy Kerrigan. I am responsible, however, for failing to report things I learned about the assault when I returned home from nationals." She added, “Despite my mistakes and rough edges, I have done nothing to violate the standards of excellence in sportsmanship that are expected in an Olympic athlete."

However, a few days later, Gillooly testified against Harding and pleaded guilty to racketeering in exchange for a two-year sentence. An employee at Dockside Saloon and Restaurant in Portland discovered Gillooly and Harding’s trash, including an envelope with notes containing information about Kerrigan’s practice arena in Massachusetts. A handwriting expert later testified that most of the notes had been written by Harding.

Kerrigan recovered in time to skate at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer and won silver. Harding, who had been granted a restart due to an issue with her shoelaces, did not win a medal.

After the Olympics, Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution. She was placed on a three-year probation and ordered to serve 500 hours of community service and pay a $160,000 fine. Harding was also forced to withdraw from the 1994 World Figure Skating Championships in Japan, which she had previously qualified for. A few months later, she was stripped of her 1994 National Figure Skating title and banned for life from USFSA. The ban also forbade Harding from being a coach in any capacity under the USFSA.

In 2017, Speaking to ABC News, Kerrigan claimed that she had never received a direct apology from Harding about the 1994 incident.

Apart from such dramatically elaborate conspiracies, the sport has also received negative attention on its judging system, one of the most recent and prominent incidents dating to the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games.

In the ladies’ single skating competition at Sochi, figure skater Yuna Kim, a favourite for the gold, finished with a silver medal, while Adelina Sotnikova, another competitor, won the gold. Immediately after the announcement of the results, debate regarding the veracity of the scores flared up among competitive skaters, coaches, and spectators, with many viewing Kim’s performance as the superior.

In order to comprehend the arguments regarding the topic of the performances by the two skaters, one must first understand the judging system currently in use, which is identical to the one used at Sochi. The website at the link https://tinyurl.com/ya2vy8nc explains the system thoroughly.

Many were displeased by the fact that Sotnikova’s choreography in the free programme outscored many veterans’, including Mao Asada’s and Carolina Kostner’s. According to an online post regarding the scandal, an expert criticised her routine for a sequence where she “pantomimes rope-pulling or tug-o-war”, and “a spiral sequence where she waves to the crowd — a move you might see a trainer perform on a sea mammal”. Sotnikova also stumbled once in her routine.

Some pointed out that Sotnikova had merited around 18 points less on the identical free programme routine only a year previous at the European Championships, and that it is nearly impossible to improve by that amount in only a year, or that her combined score at Sochi was an improvement of 22 points from her previous personal best.

The judges for Kim and Sotnikova included Yuri Balkov, who had previously been embroiled in a judging scandal, and Alla Shekhovtseva, wife to the Russian Skating Federation general director Valentin Pissev. "The two other new long program judges were from Estonia and France, which was the country that conspired with Russia to try to fix the pairs and ice dancing competition at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City," USA Today reported.

The judges for the routines had vastly differing opinions of the artistry, awarding completely different numbers from the range of possible scores spanning -3 to 3. While one judged Sotnikova’s first jump as less skillfully executed than average (a -1 score) another thought it was landed excellently (a score of 3). One of the judges considered one of Kim’s jumps merely average (a score of 1) while one thought it merited a score of 3.

After the announcement of the results, hashtags such as #yunawasrobbed skyrocketed in usage in South Korea, the country from which Kim hails. A petition to review the judging garnered two million signatures from internet users.

Some believe that the places on the final podium were given out justly, pointing out that Sotnikova’s routine had one more triple jump than Kim’s, with two more being in a combination jump, providing her with a wider error margin, or that Sotnikova used the scoring system to her benefit in order to triumph over the defending champion of the gold.

The incident was brought up again as the doping scandal of Russian athletes at the very same Games came to light.

As we reflect on some of the incidents which unfortunately tarnish the name of figure skating, surely we, as the next generation to take responsibility for societal perceptions and sportsmanship, must be reminded to respect the spirit of the sport. One can only hope to prove themselves worthy of being dubbed the future, to make their moral integrity and sense of justice evident not for their benefit but for the benefit of society.