Salt Lake City ? People out here are so mad they could spit, if spitting were legal in Utah.

They’re mad over this figure-skating scandal, which has the figure-skating world in such a state of confusion that National Guard troops have been called in to safeguard the mascara supply.

In case you don’t keep up with world events, here’s what happened: During the pairs finals, the Russian team of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze made a number of flagrant errors, including these:

Sikharulidze double-footed an axel landing. Or possibly he double-axeled a land footing. Whatever he did, it was flagrant.

Sikharulidze was also wearing a disco shirt from 1978.

During one of her spins, Berezhnaya can clearly be seen, in slow-motion video replay, taking a puff from a cigarette.

So everybody was sure that the gold medal would go to the Canadian team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who not only skated perfectly but also are much easier to spell. Yet the judges gave the gold to the Russians, a decision that had even the normally mellow Utahans screaming vicious profanities, Mormon-style (“What in the gosh darn HECK?!” “I’ll be gum swizzled!” etc.)

How could this happen? To answer that question, we must understand how figure skating is judged. There are nine judges, broken down as follows:

Judges from nations with plumbing: 4.

Judges from former communist nations where the most reliable form of transportation is the yak: 4.

French judges who hate everybody because the French never win anything: 1.

After each performance, the judges carefully weigh both the artistry, and the technical merit. Then they vote for whomever they were going to vote for anyway. Usually they vote for skaters who are from their own country, or who have an established reputation. This is why in 1998 the Olympic gold medal for pairs figure skating went to a Russian team that had retired in 1996.

In the case of the 2002 pairs gold, all the plumbing-nation judges voted for the Canadians, and all the yak-nation judges voted for the Russians. The balance was tipped by the French judge, who later admitted that she voted against the Canadians only because at the time she thought they were Americans, on the grounds that, quote, “they have good teeth.”

So now we have an Olympic scandal, which has quickly burgeoned into an international crisis. Tensions soared on Thursday night when both the Canadian and Russian governments ordered their armed forces to go on highest alert; thankfully, things cooled down a few hours later when the two countries realized that they don’t HAVE any armed forces.

But still, this scandal has cast a pall over figure skating, which must get its house in order if it is to be viewed as an untainted sport, like boxing. Fortunately, the International Skating Union has recognized the problem, and is taking steps to correct it.

“We’re going to have a thorough review of our judging procedures,” stated the ISU. “This will be done by an outside firm with an impeccable reputation: Arthur Anderson.”