The Second Mark: Courage, Corruption, and the Battle for Olympic Gold

When French judge Marie-Reine Le Gougne confessed to under-scoring a pair of Canadian figure-skaters as part of a quid pro quo deal that her country made with Russia during the 2002 Winter Olympics, she sparked the most explosive headlines the sport of ice-skating had seen since the Harding-Kerrigan fiasco. The event was extensively reported in the U.S. media, but in her first book Goodwin provides the most comprehensively researched and well told account of it so far. An Emmy Award-winning writer and producer who covers figure skating for ABC, Goodwin has used her access to athletes, judges and coaches to provide readers with a backstage view of the scandal. She chronicles the private moments of the three skating couples involved in the controversy--Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze; Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier; and Chinese Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo--following them from their humble beginnings on the frozen lakes of the Northern Caucasus, the training centers of rural Quebec and the frigid outdoor rinks of industrial Harbin. Although Goodwin covers all the ins and outs of the French-Russian bargain, her research allows her to go beyond the judging scandal to include the stories of how Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were villainized by the U.S. press; how Shen's father was impoverished by the see-sawing internal politics of China and how Pelletier turned down his first opportunity to be Sale's skating partner. The 2002 competition showcased""the greatest collection of talent ever assembled on a single night in pair skating,"" Goodwin writes. Her book lets readers see it from all the angles.16 pages of b&w photos