Thai officials deny helping pop star Vanessa-Mae make Olympic team

The odd story of the beautiful pop star and the allegedly corrupt ski judges is continuing to pick up steam, with Olympic officials in Thailand denying they did anything wrong.

The controversy centers around Vanessa-Mae, who has parlayed her self-described blend of classical, pop and jazz violin into millions in record sales.

Competing under her father’s last name -- Vanakorn -- she represented Thailand at the 2014 Sochi Games, where she finished more than 11 seconds behind the rest of the field in the giant slalom.

Last week, Slovenian ski officials alleged that her qualifying times, which she recorded in Slovenia at the last moment, were falsified by four officials at the behest of the Thai committee.

According to the BBC, the qualifying results listed one skier who was not present as finishing fourth. Another racer allegedly fell, got up and finished second.

Still, investigators said that Vanessa-Mae might not have known about the alleged fixing.

“Our duty was only to endorse her and send her to compete at the Games,” Gen. Yuthasak Sasiprapha, president of the Thai Olympic Committee, told insidethegames.biz. “Because we don’t have a skiing sport association, what we did was to look at the documentation and endorse her for the Games. We did not even know the qualifying process.”