Salt Lake City ? Figure skating judges have drawn criticism for years, their whims and shenanigans raising questions about whether the sport even belongs in the Olympics.

The latest flap sure isn’t going to help.

A day after the Russians narrowly beat the Canadians for the gold medal in pairs despite an obvious technical error, Canada’s Olympic delegation demanded an investigation.

The International Skating Union said Tuesday it would conduct a rare “internal assessment” of the way the two performances were judged, but it wasn’t clear if that was enough to satisfy the Canadians.

Others in the sport, meanwhile, said figure skating needs to make changes to ensure an “embarrassment” like this doesn’t happen again.

“You need to look at everything,” said Scott Hamilton, the 1984 gold medalist who was working as a commentator for NBC at Monday night’s event.

“You really need to analyze the entire sport from top to bottom and see how something like this could happen. Now is the time get through the Olympics, and then just have some really fundamental changes in the organization and structure of figure skating.”

Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze won the gold medal by the tiniest of margins over Jamie Sale and David Pelletier.

“We were the first to skate, and there was nothing to keep our rivals from getting a 6.0 presentation mark for skating after us,” Sikharulidze told the Sport Express, a Russian newspaper.

“But they didn’t, and that means they were not head and shoulders above us. … So let me repeat, I think that our victory is a worthy one.”

But not only did Sale and Pelletier skate cleanly, they displayed the kind of passion fans will remember years from now. The winners, meanwhile, made an error when Sikharulidze stepped out of a double axel.

The crowd was already chanting “Six! Six!” by the time Sale and Pelletier finished, begging the judges to award the Canadians a perfect score.