Alleged mobster held for fixing Olympic skating

The Globe and Mail ^ | July 31 2002 | AP

[GOP_1900AD]

ping

[NetValue]

Still corrupt.

[Guillermo]

How about a profile pict of Jamie Sale?

[glock rocks]

ping

[alisasny]

Thanks for the ping, just heard it on radio!!!

[xp38]

[tracer]

Tovarich Al will get off on a technicality after the FBI and the US Attorney misspell his name on several key legal documents.... 8~)

[xp38]

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[IncPen]

Just my 2 cents here...

I don't know how you can avoid impropriety in 'subjective' contests such as skating, dance, etc. Without objesctive criteria, it seems to me that anything goes.

And, the very notion of them as competitive sports strikes me as odd. Why not have competitive abstract painting as an Olympic event?

Also, this from the article

told the FBI that he also had fixed beauty pageants in Moscow in the early 1990s

struck me as odd.

I've always assumed all 'beauty contests' were decided in advance.

[iceskater]

Lithuanians Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas, who finished fifth, filed a protest questioning the voting that placed the couple lower than the Italian and Canadian couples who fell during the free dance, the final phase of the competition. The International Skating Union rejected the protest.

The problem isn't the judges in and of themselves, the problem is the ISU not enforcing the rules. There ARE rules the judges are supposed to follow. The ISU is a joke and is ruining the sport. These judging scandals have been going on for a long time. The ISU should have put a stop to it years ago.

[gaspar]

Hey, isn't this guy Toricelli's drinking buddy?

[B-bone]

: Still corrupt.

Say it ain't so. Not ice skating. How could this be?< /sarcasm>

[Free the USA]

Index Bump

[glock rocks]

ping

[PoisedWoman]

Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze won the gold medal by the slimmest of margins

Many viewers thought this wasn't a bad call.

Too bad Tanya Harding didn't make friends with this Russki crook...he would have done a better job with Kerrigan's knees. The irony of Tonya Harding is that she was arguably a better skater than Kerrigan and might have won fair and square. But she's a tramp, and has been in news lately on unsavory drinking and brawling charges.

Skating is supposed to be a class act. Oh well.

[Pining_4_TX]

The Olympics have long outlived their usefulness. It's become a big, corrupt, expensive joke now. I'm so glad my city was taken out of the running for the 2012 Olympics. It would have been a nightmare, and cost a ton of money, too.