Who could have guessed that the International Olympic Committee would be able to boost its image in Salt Lake City, home of the bid scandal?
That's what appears to be happening, thanks to IOC President Jacques Rogge's leadership in the controversy over the figure skating pairs competition.
Rogge is credited with driving the decision to give Canadians Jamie Sale and David Pelletier gold medals in light of alleged misconduct by a French judge.
The decision, announced Friday, has been hailed as halting the only negative press so far in the 2002 Winter Games.
The New York Times Saturday hailed Rogge for "intervening to prevent the pairs figure skating imbroglio from disfiguring the Winter Games in Salt Lake City."
Rogge also earns high marks from John MacAloon, an Olympic historian at the University of Chicago.
"Perhaps a previous IOC administration would not have been as resolute in trying to get a speedy solution," he said. "Secondly, they would surely have been a little less transparent in the way in which it proceeded."
Rogge, a Belgium surgeon and Olympic yachtsman, was elected last July to succeed longtime IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch.
"You really can see a determined and resolute sportsman there at all times," MacAloon said of Rogge.
"But he's also exceptionally tactful and deliberate in his actions. So far, he's been nearly flawless."
Under Samaranch, the decision to award a second set of gold medals likely would have been made in secret and taken many months. In contrast, Rogge publicly demanded a quick response to the controversy from the International Skating Union, which governs how ice skating is judged.
Rogge then persuaded the IOC Executive Board to approve giving gold medals to the Canadians as well as the Russian skaters originally named the winners.
Paul Henderson, an IOC member from Canada, said he doesn't think Rogge was responding to pressure from the media, which has widely reported "Skategate," a tale of skaters cheated out of a first-place finish.
But he acknowledged that the IOC is keenly aware of how it is portrayed in the press after the Salt Lake scandal. The city's bidders were accused of trying to buy the votes of IOC members with more than $1 million in cash and gifts.
Zhengliang He of China reportedly was the only IOC Executive Board member who didn't go along with Rogge's request.
He told the Deseret News he didn't think a judge's decision should be overturned "because some country has some bigger pressure from the press."
Rogge's plan to rectify the situation, said IOC member Dick Pound, "is a huge plus, a huge plus. It's not without it's risks. But this was so egregious — hundreds of millions of people around the world saw an outrageous result."
Vitaly Smirnov, an IOC vice president from Russia, declined to comment on the effect the decision was having on the organization's image. "Enough is enough," Smirnov said.
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