Posted on 02/13/2026 9:15:25 AM PST by Morgana
The 'rigging' scandal engulfing the Winter Olympics is showing no signs of slowing down after Team USA's gutted ice skaters called for the judges to be 'vetted', and thousands of fans urged the authorities to investigate.
French judge Jezabel Dabouis sparked fury this week after allegations she 'rigged' her votes to help her country to Winter Olympics gold, in turn voting down Americans Madison Chock and Evan Bates, who eventually ended up with the silver.
In the past 24 hours, more than 14,000 fans have signed a Change.org petition calling for the IOC and International Skating Union to intervene and launch a probe into the voting process, but so far nothing has been forthcoming.
In fact, the ISU has opted to stand by her, issuing its first statement late on Thursday.
'It is normal for there to be a range of scores given by different judges in any panel and a number of mechanisms are used to mitigate these variations,' it read, adding it has 'full confidence in the scores given and remains completely committed to fairness.'
Chock and Bates have since spoken to CBS News about the dubious judging after allegations the competition was 'rigged' against them.
Chock said: 'It would definitely be helpful if it's more understandable for the viewers, to just see more transparent judging and understand... what's really going on.
'I think it's also important for the skaters, that the judges be vetted and reviewed to make sure that they are also putting out their best performance.
'There's a lot on the line for the skaters when they're out there giving it their all, and we deserve to have the judges also giving us their all and for it to be a fair and even playing field.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
“ its snow boarders, not skate borders.”
Ya
Just too much drama.
Ah yes—Olympic skating judging.
Nearly always controversial!
Time for US to quit Winter Olympics have their own Olympics. From all report, Americans are not getting fair treatment from European judges.
Yep. There's a very good reason behind the "East German judge" cultural reference becoming so prominent in the '80s and '90s for incidents where bias and scoring manipulation are obvious.
While there is a subjective judging I respectfully disagree that it is not a sport.
TO be competitive as a male(real male)figure skater you have to be able to preform a QUAD spin. Meaning IF you can ONLY spin around three times in the air you are just NOT good enough.
In addition, the young man who won the gold medal for the USA also is one of the only people to throw a BACK FLIP into the routine too. To the best of my knowledge it has only been done once or twice prior by other skaters.
This is the same with gymnastics. Some of the moves that these young men and women do today as part of the routine is so much more difficult than they did just thirty years ago.
Famous gymnasts like Nadia or Olga wouldn’t even be in the top ten today with the difficulty of the things they preform.
This is the same for skating. Twenty years ago IF you could spin three times around was incredible. Now, it is ordinary.
ANY of the top competitors can do that.
Similar to the pitchers in MLB. Virtually all of them can throw 95 mph. Chapman routinely throws 102 mph. Just another day at the park for him. Yet when Mariano Rivera was a closer for the Bronx Bombers that was incredible when he would attain 100 mph.
I think you got the colors for the two countries backwards. The Americans wore the black and red, beautiful outfits telling the story of a matador and a bull. The French (one was Canadian. So what is that?) costumes very a ugly green with a water theme.
I have to wonder if the dishonest French judge who routinely judges the French skaters higher than other judges, and then judges their closest competitors lower than other judges, has the same discrepancy with the weaker competitors. If she is about the same as the other judges when the competitors don’t matter, that would say something.
If she were always higher than other judges, that would be OK, but not to be higher for the French and lower for their closest competitors.
This reminds me of the way jobs numbers and economy numbers are done in the USA. When there is a republican in the White House, the initial numbers are bad and then quietly get adjusted upwards later. When there is a democrat in the White House, they give out very encouraging numbers initially with massive publicity and adjust them downwards later on page 14 or at 2am.
Not near the level of Roy Jones Jr getting shafted in 1988.
What were you watching? I saw the American champs wearing black and red skating to “Paint it Black” with a flamenco flavor to it.
There was also more than one American duo competing.
These are very talented people.
Oh, then I’m sorry.
I refuse to pay attention to obvious satanic and otherwise leftist drab. The general mood in my part of western Canada is very pro US, yet the media would have everyone believe that everyone hates the US. It’s not true, only most governments do and their brainwashed minions do. The olympics are just another tool for them. It’s apparently so sacred they call it a spelling error for no capital O. To heck with it all.
Wait - the Olympics are going on?
France always went along with the East Bloc judges to screw Americans. Nothing new here for them.
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