Deborah Rheem / Crescenta Valley High School 11th Grade

Last week in Sochi, Russia, 17-year-old Adelina Sotnikova won Russia its first-ever women’s figure skating gold medal in Olympic history at the 22nd Winter Olympics. However, shortly thereafter, mass uproar en¬sued worldwide as critics felt South Korea’s Yuna Kim had been ripped of her title.

Rapid¬ly proliferated by social media sites, numerous news articles published on the topic umpired whether or not the results were fair.

“Queen Yun,” as commentators have dubbed her, won the gold medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olym-pics and since then, Kim has ac¬crued a dedicated an extensive fan base. Commenta¬tors described Kim’s performance as clean and grace¬ful while there was a slight flaw in Sotnikova’s performance. Crit¬ics were quick to mention the fact that Sotnikova had never even won any world championships prior. Adding heat to the debate, several controver¬sial photos were uploaded on to social media websites just several days after the event. These photos included images of Sotnikova hugging one of the judges, who just so hap¬pened to be the previous president and cur¬rent general director of the Russian skating federation. The controversy grew even larger as it was revealed that another judge was previously suspended for attempting to rig an event at the 1998 Olympics in Nagano.

Furthermore, Sotnikova was scrutinized for her actions including the instance when she left a press conference as soon as Yuna began to speak. The 17-year-old’s less than humble comment that she deserved the gold medal because she outdid Yuna only caused more anger as social media users began to mock her Gala skate performance, comparing her to a green moth. Over the past few days 1.5 million people have signed an online petition at change.org to investigate the scoring. While an anonymous high-ranking Olympic figure skating official shared that the judges were “slanted towards Sotnikova”, the Internation¬al Olympic Committee claimed that there was no controversy. Whether or not Sotnikova’s gold medal was fairly earned is a heated de¬bate that remains a prime controversy.