рус
Russia reacts: Plushenko robbed of gold medal
"Your 'silver' is as good as 'the gold", Putin's telegram published on his official Web site read. "You managed to overcome all difficulties and stumbling blocks; you committed a brave, a resolute act by returning to the big sports with splendor and showing a most complicated program on the ice of Vancouver."
Earlier in the day, Sergei Mironov, the chairman of the Russian parliament's upper house, implied the refereeing in Vancouver men's ice skating was biased.
"If we pass it over in silence we will forever remain in the backyard," Mironov said in an interview with Russian radio station Vesti FM. "We need to put the question bluntly why there was such refereeing.... We need to get to the bottom of it."
Plushenko himself even questioned the judging, saying he was the only leading competitor to land a quadruple jump, and therefore should have secured first place.
"When a person performs a quadruple jump, which is contested by atriple, and (both contenders) gain the same points, it raisesquestions," he said.
Tatiana Tarasova, a noted Russian ice skating coach who has said she helped to train gold medalist Evan Lysacek last year, complained in an interview to Vesti FM radio station that the high evaluation of the components of Lysacek's program in Vancouver was "simply hooliganism," adding that in Plushenko's gold medal "was taken away from him."
Plushenko said in a video interview to Sovetsky Sport, a popular Russian sports daily: "Lysacek skated the way they skated 20 years ago."
"I can explain why it happened the way it did," he added. "Figure skating in America is dying. Business in figure skating is dying. And naturally they need new names."
The web in Russia was boiling with indignation over the skating decision. The story published on the Russian sports daily Sovetsky Sport Web site headlined "The judges took away Plushenko's Olympic gold" drew hundreds of infuriated comments by Russian readers, many of them tinged with anger at the United States:
"America has all the money and they are interested only in victories of their own," commented the user nicknamed Silver. "They are not interested in foreign skaters."
Nikolay1 wrote: "Plushenko is absolutely right. Thanks to the Americans, in the near future one-turn jumps will be valued the highest."
Eldarrr wrote: "The Olympic Games take place in North America, so why should we be surprised. Such things already happened in Salt Lake City before."