Reinhold Aigner

Reinhold Aigner is 58 and president of the Austrian skating federation. Tall and broad-shouldered, with gray hair combed back with gel, a square, ski-tanned face and gold-rimmed glasses, he is polished and fatherly and speaks softly and slowly, like someone used to being obeyed. Thirty years with the federation, he repeats, and a ministry that funds only gold.

He lives in a dark wooden house on the outskirts of Innsbruck, with a beamed-ceiling living room, a green-tiled stove, a shelf of mountain books and, on the wall, old skis crossed above the fireplace. On winter Sundays he goes skiing before the sun is up. In summer, he walks the valleys with a walnut staff and chats with whoever he meets.

He wears a navy-blue three-piece suit, a red tie with the federation pin, an Olympic credential around his neck and, on his arm, a gray wool overcoat carefully folded. He holds the hand of whoever he greets a moment too long, looking into their eyes. He rarely raises his voice, and those who work with him say he never needed to.

About the final, his account is a director's: he watched skating, he says, and the Ukrainians have more difficulty, the Canadians more smile. The panel decided, as it always decides. Afterward, he gave two interviews, declined the third and came when the referee called. If the detective wants the time of each glass of water, let him ask. He prefers to be asked about the federation, which he built with patience.

When the question suggests he bought the pairs gold, Reinhold answers that he has presided over a federation for thirty years and warns that, from here on, he will speak only with the federation's lawyer beside him. He folds the overcoat over his arm, without raising his voice, and the calm weighs: the pride of an official with a clean career or the habit of someone who commands without asking?