Sochi scandal: Was 17-year-old Russian skater's win fixed..?

Sochi: More than 1.7 million people have signed a Change.org petition demanding that an investigation into the judging decisions in Thursday night's women's figure skating competition be opened. On Thursday night, Russian 17-year-old Adelina Sotnikova won the figure skating gold medal over reigning Olympic champion Yuna Kim, 23, from South Korea. Sotnikova finished with a total score of 224.59, beating Kim's score of 219.11 by 5.48 points after the free skate program, becoming the first female Russian skater to win in the category.Kim would have been the third woman in history to defend her Olympic gold medal after her landslide win at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics where she beat her closest rival by 23.06 points. However, that title eluded her when Sotnikova was announced as the gold-medal winner with Kim in second and Italian Carolina Kostner with bronze. The reaction was immediate and vocal, with more than 700,000 people signing the petition within six hours.Many called for greater transparency in the judging panel, which was overwhelmingly made up of Eastern Bloc nations.One of the judges, whose votes were anonymous, was Yuri Balkov of the Ukraine who was caught on camera trying to fix an event at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.Another, Alla Shekhovtseva, is married to the head of the Russian figure skating federation, reports USA Today.Critics pointed to another Russian skater in the competition, Yulia Lipnitskaya, who fell more than once during her program yet still managed to beat American Ashley Wagner, who came in seventh.'I feel gypped,' Wagner said at a news conference Thursday. 'People don't want to watch a sport where you see people fall down and somehow score above someone who goes clean.'