Figure skating at the 2002 Winter Olympics
2002 Winter Olympic Games Figure skating
Pairs
- Medals awarded February 11, 2002; second award ceremony February 17.
- Gold medal: Yelena Berezhnaya/Anton Sikharulidze (RUS) and Jamie Salé/David Pelletier (CAN)
- Bronze: Shen Xue/Zhao Hongbo (CHN)
A controversial decision which extended the Russian dominance of pairs skating at the Olympics. Salé/Pelletier were the crowd favorites and skated a flawless program, while Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze stumbled during their double axel. Minutes before the Canadians went on, Salé accidentally collided with Sikharulidze and was rather shaken.
Judges from Russia, the People's Republic of China, Poland, Ukraine, and France placed the Russians first; judges from the United States, Canada, Germany, and Japan gave the nod to the Canadians. The International Skating Union announced a day after the competition that it would conduct an "internal assessment" into the judging decision. On February 15 the ISA and IOC, in a joint press conference, announced that it would award a second gold medal to Salé and Pelletier, and that Aleksey Yagudin (RUS)
- Yevgeni Plushenko (RUS)
- Marina Anissina/Gwendal Peizerat (FRA)
- Irina Lobacheva/Ilya Averbukh (RUS)
- Barbara Fusar Poli/Sarah Hughes (USA)
- Irina Slutskaya (RUS)
- Michelle Kwan (USA)
Hughes, fourth after the technical program, skated a flawless and energetic free program. Kwan led after the technical program but slipped to third after two jumping errors. American Sasha Cohen finished a strong fourth. Slutskaya became only the second Russian to medal in the women's event at the Olympics.
Hughes and Slutskaya finished with tie scores, Hughes winning the gold medal on a tiebreaker for having won the free program in a close result. Russia filed a protest of the result the day following the event, which as of this writing is not yet resolved.
