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Summarising: Russia to take all gold in Olympic figure skating?
At present Irina Slutskaya is 0,03 points behind the American figure skater Sasha Cohen, leading in the women`s competition after the short programme. Irina deserves giving her due - her performance was irreproachable, however, the judges (alas, but it was not unexpected) gave her programme low score.
In a brief interview after the performance, Irina said, that usually her second score was much higher. Taking in account her rather high personal record, received at the present Olympics score has little force.
There was an impression that higher points are stored for others - Irina`s possible competitors Shizuka Arakawa, Carolina Kostner and Sasha Cohen came onto the rink after her. Fairly speaking, only the latter could be a real competitor to Irina.
So what is the reason: imperfection of judging or preconceived attitude towards the Russian skater? There has been an opinion circulating from the very beginning of the Olympic Games, that Russia will not manage to take all gold in figure skating. However, our country is close to it - three gold medals (Totmyanina and Marinin, Plushenko, Navka and Kostomarov) belong to Russian team already.
The first Olympic champion in pairs, the head of Ice Dancing Committee in ISU Alexander Gorshkov has forecasted such a course of events: "Figure skaters have good chance to win all four programmes, as far as Russia is presented by World champions - Eugeny Plushenko, Irina Slutskaya, Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin, Tatyana Navka and Roman Kostomarov. But there is another question - will the judges let us win four gold medals? To tell the truth, I doubt. It has never happened yet in the Olympics history. They will take away one medal from Russian team".
The question of objectiveness of judgment already arose at the Olympic Games in Salt-Lake-City, when a serious scandal occurred. In 2002 Russians obtained "clean gold" only in men`s programme, Alexei Yagudin took gold medal, Eugeny Plushenko took silver medal. Ice dancing Olympic champions became French pair Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat won gold medal, Irina Lobacheva and Iliya Overbukh won silver. In women`s programme Sarah Hughes became the champion, Slutskaya was the second. The main scandalous events took place in pairs` competition: gold medal won by Anton Sikharulidze and Elena Berezhnaya was contested by Canadian figure skaters Jamie Sale & David Pelletier. As a result, an unexampled case in the history of this Olympic programme took place: two "golds" in one discipline.
It is too early to forecast total results of Russian team performance in Torino.
However, it has already become clear that Russia has overcome its own result in Salt-Lake-City concerning gold medals. If our country manages to hold a record and receive four "figure" gold medals, time will show. And the judges.
As for Irina Slutskaya, she has promised on her turn: "I`ll do my best".
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