Sasha Cohen finished fourth, after a fall on the back end of a triple lutz-triple toe combination.

The judges' revised rankings put Hughes ahead of Kwan, an undesired effect of the independent irrelevant alternative.

In the first week of the Games, a controversy in the pairs' figure skating competition culminated in the French judge's scores being thrown out and the Canadian team of Jamie Salé and David Pelletier being awarded a gold medal (together with the Russians who were controversially awarded gold previously and kept their medals despite the allegations of vote swapping and buying the votes of the French judge).

Allegations of bribery were leveled against many ice-skating judges, leading to the arrest of known criminal Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov in Italy (at the request of the United States).

On February 15 the ISU and IOC, in a joint press conference, announced that Marie-Reine Le Gougne, the French judge implicated in collusion, was guilty of misconduct and was suspended effective immediately.