Lithuanian protest adds to "Skategate" rumpus

Lithuania have launched a protest against the judging of Monday's ice dance competition, the second former Communist country to challenge Winter Olympic officials since the "Skategate" controversy.

"A protest has been filed overnight and is in the hands of the event referee, Alexandr Gorshkov," a spokeswoman for the International Skating Union (ISU) said on Tuesday. Lithuania's team have announced a news conference for 2200 GMT.

Russians were angered by the decision to grant Canadians David Pelletier and Jamie Sale duplicate gold medals alongside Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze which they blamed on a north American media frenzy over judging of the pairs event.

"It has been absolutely crap - it started from day one this smear campaign by the American media against our athletes," a spokesman for the Russian Olympic Committee said on Tuesday.

"It looks as if American television has been running this Olympics."

On Monday - 24 hours after Pelletier and Sale got their medals - Russia launched an appeal alleging that biased judging denied Olga Koroleva a medal in the women's freestyle skiing aerials. She finished fourth after leading the first round.

Also on Monday, Belarus's team chief Yaroslav Barichko was thrown out of the Games after one of his athletes went missing when she was due to undergo an out of competition drugs test.

Belarus officials said on Tuesday they still did not know where speedskater Yulia Pavlovich was and insisted Barichko had never been asked to explain himself, as the IOC had said.

In Monday night's ice dance, Lithuania's Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas came fifth behind French gold medallists Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat.

The appeal surrounds the free dance element of the competition. Both the Italian and Canadian pairs, who finished third and fourth, fell in the free dance and the Lithuanians skated without an obvious flaw.

"After the Italians fell on the required elements the judges put them ahead of us ... it was funny, just funny," Drobiazko said on Monday.

"We skated better tonight than them and they fell, and nothing changed."

The judges' marks showed that technically the Lithuanians were comparable with the Italians and the Canadians, but on presentation they were scored lower.

At the 2001 world championships in Vancouver, spectators booed at the low marks awarded to the Lithuanians where they were also fifth.

Ales Valenta won the Czech Republic's first gold of the Games in the freestyle skiing aerials when American Eric Bergoust, leading after the first jump, fell on landing the final jump of the event.