There was supposed to be a figure skating competition at the Gay Games in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, earlier this month.

The event, however, never took place. It was canceled at the last minute because the International Skating Union would not sanction it.

The ISU has done a lot of things recently that deserve criticism, but the organization was not at fault this time. The ISU's refusal to sanction this competition was not an act of discrimination against the gay sports movement. In fact, the event's organizers simply failed to follow proper procedures for obtaining a sanction.

A SANCTION OR WAIVER FOR THIS competition was necessary because skaters competing in unsanctioned events are considered "professionals" -- even if no money is involved -- and permanently lose their eligibility to participate in regular ISU events.

Although most of the skaters involved with the Gay Games are not elite-level athletes, many are active as adult-track competitors or as judges within their own national skating federations, which are bound to follow ISU eligibility rules. Participating in an unsanctioned event would also have forced any ISU judges who officiated at this event to lose their ISU eligibility.

Figure skating was held at the 1994 Gay Games in New York. The organizers of that competition were able to bypass the ISU entirely because they did not try to run their event as an elite international competition.

The ISU actually has no standard rules or procedures for non-elite competitions. These are left to the control of the national federation in the host country, and skaters from other countries may compete with the permission of their own federations. This is the manner in which hundreds of local interclub competitions are held in the United States every year.

In the case of the 1994 Gay Games, the organizers worked with both the U.S. and Canadian skating federations to obtain waivers so that skaters could compete without compromising their eligibility.

BUT ACCORDING TO LAURA MOORE, co-chair for figure skating at the 1994 event, the figure skating coordinators in Amsterdam -- Daan Boer and Ton Van Roode -- "expressed complete disdain for the type of competition that we had. They assured me that they were not interested in having a competition for anyone other than elite skaters."

It's not clear why the organizers of the 1998 Gay Games attempted to run the figure skating events as an international elite competition instead of following the precedent of the 1994 Games.

The Gay Games are explicitly chartered as a participatory event, open to athletes of all abilities. In practice as well as in theory, most skaters who entered were recreational or adult skaters, not elite-level athletes capable of performing the triple jumps required by ISU rules. As things turned out, the elite divisions for women and dance in Amsterdam attracted no participants, and there was only one elite pair team.

In addition, some skaters questioned whether it was appropriate to try to run the Gay Games competition under ISU rules for philosophical reasons. For example, how could same-sex pairs competitions be reconciled with the ISU rule that defines a pair team as consisting of a lady and a man?

The first mistake of the Amsterdam organizers was to set an overly ambitious goal for this competition. Their second mistake, once they had established that goal, was failing to follow the proper procedures for obtaining a sanction in a timely manner, and to run the event in accordance with the ISU's regulations.

THE ISU DOES NOT ISSUE SANCTIONS to competition organizers or promoters directly. Instead, the application to the ISU must come from the national skating federation in the country where the competition is to be held -- in this case, the Netherlands federation (KNSB).

Although the Gay Games organizers did contact the KNSB, the KNSB failed to apply to the ISU for a sanction. And, instead of keeping tabs on the situation, the Gay Games organizers simply ignored the whole issue of the ISU and the ISU's regulations in planning the competition.

The organizers never informed the skaters about the sanctioning problem, and many of the athletes did not even realize that their eligibility was in jeopardy until a protest was staged at the opening-draw ceremony. By that time, it was far too late to resolve the problem.

The final, and perhaps most serious, mistake of the Amsterdam organizers was the way in which they responded to this crisis, which has done very serious harm to the future of skating events at the Gay Games.

The first hint many people received that something had gone wrong came from an inflammatory press release from the European Gay & Lesbian Sport Federation denouncing the ISU for threatening to "blacklist" skaters who participated in the Gay Games.

THE EGLSF CITED THE ISU'S actions as "proof of the still-existing homophobic atmosphere within the regular sport associations," rather than as the result of a procedural screw-up on the part of the Amsterdam organizers.

Because of statements

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like this, the ISU was deluged with bad publicity and accusations of homophobia that were completely unjustified. Even the mayor of Amsterdam, Schelto Patijn, was quoted as calling the ISU "bastards".

Meanwhile, once people within the sport began to realize that the ISU had never even received an application for a sanction, the Amsterdam organizers shifted the blame to the KNSB and filed a lawsuit against them. Others continued to attack the ISU for failing to make an exception to their rules to provide a last-minute sanction for the Gay Games -- even though the ISU's regulations simply don't allow them to make last-minute exceptions.

This kind of hostile and belligerent attitude on the part of the people associated with running the Amsterdam event and the gay sports community as a whole has done tremendous amount of harm to the future of skating at the Gay Games.

In order to prevent similar sanctioning problems in the future, the organizers must work with the ISU and the national skating federations -- not treat them as enemies. But after this fiasco, it wouldn't be surprising if these federations wanted nothing further to do with the Gay Games, out of reluctance to deal with an incompetent and abrasive organization, and fear of being drawn into legal battles.

IT ALSO WOULD NOT BE SURPRISING if the mishandling of the sanctioning procedures in Amsterdam makes it even more difficult to attract high-level, elite competitors to the Gay Games in the future.

The real victims are the skaters, who deserve better than this. Some skaters canceled plans to travel to Amsterdam or returned home when it was announced that their competition was canceled. Others stayed and performed in what was billed as a "public practice". The audience was large and supportive and a corporate sponsor donated medals for all of the participants, but these athletes had come to Amsterdam to compete with their peers, not to become political symbols of an overly defensive us-against-them mentality.

"I'm tired of reading in the press how we skated in protest against the ISU," said Laura Moore, who skated pairs with her partner Linda Carney in Amsterdam. "I skated with my heart ... for the thousands who came to watch. That heart broke when the lies we have been hearing all week were so proudly proclaimed to that audience."