Marie-Reine Le Gougne

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Marie-Reine Le Gougne, often known simply as The French Judge, was a central figure in the 2002 Olympic Winter Games figure skating scandal.

Le Gougne took up figure skating as a child in France, but never competed at a high level. Instead, she decided to become a skating judge, and progressed rapidly up the ranks. By the time she was 25, she had an appointment to judge international figure skating competitions. At the age of 36, she judged at the 1998 Winter Olympics, considered a high honor for a figure skating judge. She was promoted with a referee's appointment, and selected again to judge at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. Le Gougne had the reputation of being a competent judge, but was known to be very ambitious. With the support of the Fédération Française des Sports de Glace (French skating federation), she was planning to run for a position on the International Skating Union's Technical Committee at that organization's Congress later in 2002.

Le Gougne became notorious for her actions during and after the pair skating competition in Salt Lake City. Although four other judges also placed Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze ahead of the crowd favorites Jamie Salé and David Pelletier in the free skating, Le Gougne was immediately singled out for suspicion by television commentators and other observers. When she returned to the officials' hotel after the competition, she was confronted in the lobby by Sally Stapleford, then the chair of the Technical Committee, who began to question her about her judging of the event. Le Gougne broke down in a tearful outburst that was witnessed by a number of other skating officials who happened to be present in the hotel lobby. She insisted that she had been pressured by the head of the French federation, Didier Gailhaguet, to put the Russians first as part of a deal to give the ice dancing gold to the French team. She repeated these statements in the judges' post-event review meeting the following day, but in the following days and weeks, she issued a number of contradictory statements and retractions, and also stated that she had truly believed the Russian pair deserved to win. Both Le Gougne and Gailhaguet were eventually suspended from the sport for three years by the International Skating Union, which never made any serious investigation of the alleged wider conspiracy with Russian skating officials.

Because of Le Gougne's notoriety in this incident, the phrase "the French judge" became commonly associated with cheating and corruption, even in non-skating contexts.

After the Games, Le Gougne wrote a book about her experiences, Glissades à Salt Lake City (ISBN 2-84114-650-2).

[edit] References

• Joy Goodwin, The Second Mark. ISBN 0-7432-4527-X.
• Jon Jackson, On Edge. ISBN 1560258047.
• Sonia Bianchetti Garbato, Cracked Ice. ISBN 88-86753-72-1.