Former US Olympic figure skating coach Audrey Weisiger has questioned the judges who awarded Russia's Adelina Sotnikova the gold medal in the women's figure skating at the Winter Olympic Games on Thursday.

According to reports, one judge was suspended for a year for attempting to fix an event at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.

Another judge is reportedly married to the president of the Russian figure skating federation.

Weisiger told USA Today: "It's sad that I just presumed Sotnikova was going to get a boost [in points] because this was in Russia. Isn't it sad that I automatically thought that? Not one person in skating I've talked to said that's the way it should have gone."

Sotnikova had scored 74.64 in the short programme before achieving a huge score of 149.95 in the long programme.