Another Skating Controversy? Go Figure

Every summer night in the United States, blue-shirted arbiters make subjective decisions on rules that change from eye to eye.

We sigh and say, “That’s baseball.”

Every winter night in the United States, a striped-shirted jury makes quick decisions on rules blurry or unwritten.

We shrug and say, “That’s basketball.”

So forgive me for not hitting the ice and ramming my wife’s favorite sport into the boards in the wake of a report that an Olympic pairs event was rigged.

All together now ...

“That’s skating.”

Don’t trust it anymore? Don’t watch it.

Oh, but NBC knows you’ll watch it.

The network knows this so well, it will spend the remaining 10 days of these Winter Olympics milking the story that a French judge was pressured to vote the gold pairs medal to Russian skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze over Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.

By the end of these Games, you will have seen more of Scott Hamilton than any weeping athlete, his screeching whines drowning out their victorious cries.

Can’t stomach it? Don’t read about it.

Oh, but we know you’ll read about it.

The controversy has run on the front page of this newspaper for the last two days, putting sequins in the same room as terrorism and war crimes, and we’ll keep chopping down trees for it until the Games have ended.

After which, the sale completed, it will disappear from every medium as quickly as a blue-light special.

And when the next big skating event occurs, fans will not wonder more than usual about the judging, being too preoccupied with checking out the channel and the time.

We’re all having too much fun and making too much money to bother with a little perspective.

But what happened this week is not news.

It’s sports.

So an official felt pressure to change her vote.

So what do you think college basketball officials feel every time they work a game in a small and loud arena? There is a reason home teams get most of their calls and win most of their games. That reason is that officials are human.

But, wait, you say, this is even more serious. This is like an NFL referee saying he overheard a line judge say he was pressured to make a bad call that decided a game.

Well, if you ask the Oakland Raiders, something like that happened several weeks ago, when a replay official interrupted what was a certain playoff victory over New England in the final minutes to make a bad decision that eventually gave the Patriots the victory.

Despite the shame of a call that changed a season, there were no news conferences, no lawyers, no appeals, no investigations.

After all, it was the beloved Patriots punking the hated Raiders.

Nothing at all like the beloved Canadians being punked by the Russians, right?

Finally, you ask, what about the obvious judging bias toward a Russian group that had already won 10 consecutive pairs championships?

Anybody remember Michael Jordan’s NBA-championship-winning shot before his last retirement? Remember how he clearly pushed off Utah’s Byron Russell before hitting the jumper?

Nobody complained, because the veteran gets the call.

Everybody is complaining and glaring and finger-pointing now because ... why exactly?

When the head of the French figure skating federation said French judge Marie Reine Le Gougne felt pressure, how did that make her any different from any of the other judges that night, or any other night?

Think Canadian judge Benoit Lavoie felt any pressure from his bosses? Everyone knows that judges are told, when in doubt, remember who paid your way.

How about the U.S. judge Lucy Brennan, voting after seeing her countrymen going crazy over the wonderful performance of Sale and Pelletier? Any pressure there?

Of course. Even with its technical component, skating is still judged subjectively, leaving such decisions open to the vagaries of the heart.

Those decisions have worked well enough that skating has survived as an Olympic sport for 94 years. The best skaters almost always win.

America, of course, has already decided that the wrong skaters won Monday. Or haven’t you seen the NBC polls, which are whipping up folks into a lather not seen since Regis split with Kathie Lee?

At last count, something like 99.9% of viewers think the Canadians should have won.

As if even 1% would know. As if I would know. As if anybody who wasn’t sitting with the judges would know.

Even Claire Ferguson, former U.S. skating boss and judge who was sitting next to the referee Monday, said she wouldn’t know.

“I don’t know when everybody got so smart,” she said. “I’m not that smart. I didn’t take notes. I didn’t check off everything everybody did.”

The Russians held a slight lead before the free skate, which meant they had to stumble to lose. Not just technically, but artistically.

While they slipped in the first category, they shined in the second.

They used music that was more familiar to the majority of the judges. They looked more like champions to the majority of the judges.

If there was a bias here, it wasn’t national bias, it was cultural bias.

In other words, never try to win an Olympic skating championship in front of eight non-American judges by using music from a sappy 1970s American movie.

Officials decide the French judge was dirty. So that judge’s vote gets thrown out.

That doesn’t mean the Canadians win. That only means that the votes are tied, 4-4.

Which means that the Russians, as the leaders before the competition, would still leave as champions.

Wait. That’s boxing.

But come to think of it, that’s also figure skating.

Sometimes sinister, other times shameful, but always bulletproof

You’ve never trusted Don King, but that doesn’t stop you from watching Oscar De La Hoya.

You no longer trust Marie

Reine Le Gougne, but that won’t stop you from cheering for Michelle Kwan.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.