The Day The Music (Almost) Died

Eight years ago tonight, the eyes and ears of the world were glued to one of the most bizarre scenes in Winter Olympics history.
Four figure skaters — two of them Canadian, two of them Russian — standing on the top step of a podium, every one of them wearing gold medals. It was the final chapter in one of the most sordid tales the sport had ever seen. And one that almost struck it with a death blow.
We speak, of course, of the judging scandal that enveloped Canadian pairs skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Within hours of the final verdict in the event — which saw Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze declared the winners despite the fact Sale and Pelletier clearly outskated them with one of great performances in Olympic history —it was revealed back- room dealing between Russian and French officials rigged the result.
The scandal almost immediately ignited a global media firestorm that wasn't quelled until International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge announced, in an unprecented move, that Sale and Pelletier would be awarded duplicate gold medals.
Cue the awkward double medal presentation. While we heard the words "special ceremony" used to describe it earlier today on CTV, I got an entirely different viewpoint from Sale and Pelletier when revisiting "Skategate" in an Ottawa Sun feature four years ago before the 2006 Turin Games.
Pelletier called it "a great TV moment, not a great athlete moment" and that about summed it up. Clearly. neither he nor Sale wanted any part of the ceremony (we'll assume the Russians felt the same way) and just did it to appease NBC in particular.
What can't be denied, however, is that the aftershocks of that dark moment in figure skating history are still being felt to this day. The sport is still struggling to regain the popularity it enjoyed before Salt Lake, even in Canada, where its support has always been the greatest.
Perhaps the scandal's biggest legacy: the code of points scoring method that replaced the old (and easily manipulated) 6.0 system of days gone by. While it is still a mystery to far too many people, it says here that figure skating is much better off with what it has today. But much work still needs to be done to satisfy a public that, seven years later, finds the whole thing entirely too confusing.
Figure skating, it must be said, does a horrible job of explaining the system to its paying audience. They see all kinds of numbers and a huge segment of them haven't a clue what they mean. That's something that absolutely must be addressed, and sooner rather than later.
And much as the system is an improvement over the old way, it still must be tweaked regularly to help the sport evolve. There has been a great outcry this week about the lack of quadruple jumps in the men's event, and it's valid criticism. But until the point value for the jump is increased to make it worth the risk, nothing will change and the sport stands still. It's also been proven, by Canadian Jeffrey Buttle in 2008, that you can win a world title without one if the rest of your repertoire is top notch and your execution is of the highest level.
But here's what I like the most about COP. Canada's Patrick Chan is about nine points out of the medals heading into Thursday night's Olympic free skate final — a veritable mountain to climb, indeed, but not beyond the realm of possibility.
Under the old 6.0 system, Chan's hopes would be dead and buried. But COP makes the impossible seem possible and the fans feel that, too. And when it comes to figure skating, anything that makes the fans believe is a very good thing, because they're the lifeblood of any sport.
But COP is far from perfect yet. A few tweaks here and there and maybe figure skating can find its way back to its glory days again.