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Hell freezes over: Winter Olympics controversies
What comes to mind when you think of the Winter Olympics? Blazing downhill speed? Getting big air on the half-pipe? Triple axels? Luge? An international spirit of competition as pure as the driven snow?
Every four years the Winter Olympics offers fans the majesty of winter sports. But pure as a driven snow? Hardly. In fact, the Winter Games often have been marred by controversies, complex conspiratorial cabals and common cheating.
In 1948 at the V Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz, the United States Olympic Team involved itself in a bitter hockey brawl off the ice. Two hockey teams, the Amateur Athletic Union team and the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States team, arrived in Switzerland and claimed to be the rightful representative of the United States. An academic paper entitled "A Colossal Embroglio: Control of Amateur Ice Hockey in the United States and the 1948 Olympic Winter Games" (http://www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/Olympika/Olympika_1998/olympika0701d.pdf), describes the dispute in detail, rife with petulant defiance and contrasting definitions of amateurism. More recently, the United States hockey team at the 1998 Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, displayed petulance and immature behavior. Upset at their poor showing, several players trashed several rooms in the Olympic Village (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/olympics1998/sport/hockey/articles/trash20.htm).
Although past Winter Olympics dealt with bobsled saboteurs, mysterious men running across ski slopes during races and snowboarders using recreational drugs, no winter sport generates more sordid controversies than figure skating. The artistic grace, defined precision, glittery costumes and blindingly white smiles belie the cutthroat rivalries of the skaters, most notoriously that of Tonya and Nancy.
In 1994, Nancy Kerrigan, the United States' leading figure skater, was struck on her knee with a metal club a day before her Olympic tryout. At first, her attack appeared to be a random act of violence, but a police investigation revealed that Tonya Harding, Kerrigan's main skating rival, organized the "hit." This compendium of Washington Post articles (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/olympics1998/history/timeline/articles/list.htm) chronicles the crime and ensuing trial.
While Kerrigan resumed a normal life after the Lillehammer Olympics, Harding could not keep herself out of trouble, as evidenced by these police reports (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/tonyah1.html and http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/hardingdui1.html) and the accompanying mugshot (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/hardingmug1.html).
During the 2002 Olympics, the entire figure skating world was scandalized when Russian pairs skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze were awarded the gold medal over the deserving Canadian pair, Jamie Salé and David Pelletier. Known as "Skategate," a judging conspiracy involving a Russian mobster dealing with the French and Russian skating federations was revealed. The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) aired an investigative documentary, "Ice Storm: The Salé and Pelletier Affair," and currently provides a timeline of pertinent events (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/show/CTVShows/20060103/IceStormSalePelletier/20060103/).
Even before the ongoing Torino Winter Olympics (http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/torino/index_uk.asp) began, controversies surrounding the games abound—notably, comments made by American Bode Miller about skiing drunk (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/05/60minutes/main1182654.shtml), and the sexual harassment allegations (later dropped) against United States skeleton coach Tim Nardiello (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5125757).
To stay up to date with the juiciest Olympic stories of 2006, try the database Lexis-Nexis (http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/lexisnexis.html) to access stateside and international news services reports.
Of course, for every Tonya Harding there are hundreds of inspiring Eddie "the Eagle" Edwardses, electrifying Dorothy Hamills, and freewheeling Jamaican bobsled teams. The CBC offers concise histories of the Winter Olympic Games (http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/history/), documenting the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (http://espn.go.com/media/2001/q1/classic-intor-78(2).avi) of these remarkable athletes.
—Dean Hendrix, University Libraries