Money runs the world, doesn't it? Well, that statement might not actually work in every situation where money is involved, though.
During the second week of the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, USA, millions of fans were witnessing a historical moment in figure skating: two worldwide-class pairs from Russia and Canada were competing for the gold in their Free Skate. The first ones to step on the olympic ice were the Russians. Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, who had been skating together for not such a long time, performed marvelously and almost flawlessly their program, receiving adequate marks: 5.7, 5.8 and 5.9 for their teqhnique and mostly 5.9 for the artistism. The spectators on the stadium ran wild at that very moment, expressing their infinite admiration and excitement for the Russian team. The next ones, and consequently the last ones to compete were the Canadians, Jamie Salle and David Pelletier. Even though they skated cleaner than their previous opponents, the skaters received lower marks: 5.7 and 5.8 both for the teqhnique and artistism. As the competition ended, the Russian figure skaters were proclaimed winners and given their gold medals, whereas the Canadian pair got silver. Of course, the latter weren't at all satisfied with the final results, so they decided on complaining about it to the referees, being ready to make everything to get "their" gold medals back. Their trainers decided to help their pupils a little bit, trying to get a satisfactory result from the financial point of view; they tried to bribe the judges so they would have given the gold medals "correctly" to the Canadian team.
Unfortunately, both of the teams were awarded with gold medals the following day after the event took place, as the Canadians offered a quite large sum to the judges. The happiest of all were, of course, the latter; they got gold, their dream finally came true, they did justice to the judging system. The Russian skaters, even though they didn't lose their award, felt awful and disrespected, they couldn't understand how something like that could have been possible in their sport.
However, since that major scandal in figure skating,
a lot of changes have been made in the scoring system. Unluckily for the other skaters who are competing nowadays, that paid sum for the judges at Salt Lake City played a big role in making figure skating a more demanding and subjective sport, which I find extremely bad especially for the athletes' health, for they now have to work more and more.

Last edited by aphrodite_15 (2019-03-16 20:57:03)