Rogge runs warmer IOC.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

THE BIGGEST STORY of these Winter Olympics hasn't been a performance, really, but a choice - the decision to award duplicate gold medals to Canadian pairs skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier in the wake of the biggest judging scandal in Winter Olympics history.

That decision was criticized in these pages over the weekend by the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan, who wrote that handing out multiple gold medals only makes the International Skating Union and the International Olympic Committee "look foolish."

As Ryan, one of this country's most prominent sports columnists, put it, "there is no cure for the judging in figure skating, even dishonest judging."

Within the Olympic movement, the awarding of the duplicate gold medals is a bigger story than the scandal itself - a scandal in which a French skating judge, who now denies the charge, allegedly was pressured into voting for the Russian skaters, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze in a vote-swapping scheme. Folks in the Olympic movement seem to accept that that stuff goes on all the time, and what a sad commentary that is.

Yet in part for that very reason, the decision to award duplicate gold medals was exactly the right thing to do, and it sends a heartening message to Olympic athletes in all sports, Winter Games or Summer Games, that the regime of new IOC President Jacques Rogge will be better for them.

"It sets a new threshold for ethical behavior, a new flavor, a new sense of leadership," said noted Eugene sports psychologist Steven Ungerleider, who is in Salt Lake City for the Winter Olympics and who was in the audience for the controversial pairs competition.

"Certainly, Jacques Rogge took a huge risk, and there may be some problems with opening this door, but speaking from the perspective of a psychologist who's been an advocate for athletes and ethics in sports ... I'm very impressed that he took a very tough stand. I support it. I think it was a good move, and in the same breath it opens the door for problems, and we'll see how it plays out.

"But I do think it was an important move. Athletes have been beat up for too long, and there have been these deals cut behind the scenes for way too many years, and that's got to stop."

Ungerleider said Rogge, who is staying in the Olympic Village rather than in a five-star hotel suite - as was the style of his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch - is popular among athletes, and that his decision has been well-received by athletes.

IN MY OPINION, the IOC did the right thing, because we're not talking here about a bad call in the heat of competition, a questionable decision that when reviewed on instant replay was clearly wrong. Those things can happen in any sport in which the outcome is decided by more than the clock, and they're accepted as part of the landscape.

This was different. This was a case in which the fix was in and, worse, from the perspective of the IOC, by the end of the week the world knew that the fix was in.

It wasn't a matter of TV commentators and news media and the fans thinking that the Canadian skaters got robbed - there are also strong opinions that the Russian skaters performed a much tougher program and deserved to have been rewarded for that - but that the tie-breaking vote in the judging was, in essence, bought and paid for.

As Jere Longman wrote in The New York Times: "By acting quickly and forcefully ... Rogge not only helped quiet the skating furor, he also presented a public face of the organization that appears more sensitive to public opinion and to issues that threaten the legitimacy of competition."

The "can of worms" that is opened by the IOC decision, Ungerleider said, is whether having righted this wrong after the fact - if less than a week after - the IOC will be pressured to address other past wrongs.

What, indeed, of the U.S. men's basketball team, which suffered a grave injustice in the 1972 Olympics? What of American boxer Roy Jones in Korea? What of swimmers in the 1970s and early 1980s who lost medals to East Germans reared on performance-enhancing drugs in a government program?

Ungerleider, whose book on the East German doping machine, "Faust's Gold," has received critical acclaim, believes the IOC must address the past in some way.

"I don't mean medals," he said. "I think that would be inappropriate. But they need to look at the facts, and say to the U.S. kids who swam in the 1970s and '80s that, `Hey, this was a terrible injustice, and now we have the proof, and we owe you guys an apology.' '

That would be a message that the IOC, after the imperious reign of Samaranch, cares about its credibility and cares about the athletes. Last week's ruling to award duplicate golds suggests that it might. That's the bigger news from Salt Lake City than the scandal itself.