We're one thug away from 'The Sopranos' on ice

Just what figure skating needed: another cheap thrill.

Already a refuge for con artists and cronyism, now it has become a front for the mob. Any hope of getting the sport kicked of the next Winter Olympics just vanished. Besides having friends now in high and low places, imagine the appeal of "The Sopranos" on ice.

A few people already have.

Former national pairs skating champion Tai Babilonia said she would have trouble telling little kids to take up her sport.

That was six weeks ago.

Plenty of drama

Thursday morning, Babilonia picked up her newspaper in Los Angeles and read about the latest intrigue. As befits a sport with both an international clientele and a flair for the dramatic, the story detailed the arrest of a Russian mobster living in an Italian resort who was charged by U.S. prosecutors in Manhattan with fixing a pair of figure skating events at the Salt Lake City Olympics. (Get this: The mobster undertook the whole thing so he could get a permanent visa to live in France. France!)

And this is what Babilonia, who said she "tries to look on the good side of everything and everyone," said about her sport: "They need to spray '409' on the whole thing."

Randy Gardner, her former skating partner, was thinking the same thing.

"There have been tight squeezes and close calls before, but this is kind of like our Enron," he said.

An attention-getter

But John Nicks, the British-born, plain-speaking skating coach who has just as much at stake in the sport as his former pupils, is anything but dismayed.

He's been in the racket long enough to know the latest turn of events might be bad for reputations, but it couldn't be much better for business.

"It's something I wouldn't have put together my whole life," he said, chuckling. "I can think of no more unlikely combination than ice dancing and the FBI."

This scandal moves figure skating farther out on the limb, away from gymnastics and closer to pro wrestling.

It's becoming a parody of itself.

Jim Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press.