WINTER OLYMPICS:TO OUTSIDERS, a figure skating coach is the anonymous figure who sits next to the athlete, holding their hand as they breathlessly wait for their scores. But to the cognoscenti of the Olympic rink Ingo Steuer is one of the most controversial figures of the 2010 games.

Twenty-five years ago, Steuer was a teenage prodigy in East Germany and an informer for the Stasi under the code-name Torsten, passing information to the secret police about his fellow skaters. But last night he was rink-side in Vancouver as the German couple Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy tried for gold in the pairs figure skating. “I don’t want to talk about all of that here at the Olympics,” he said.

Steuer’s book, Ice Age, will be published this year and marks the latest attempt to rehabilitate his reputation that was all but destroyed after details of his Stasi past were revealed just before the 2006 winter Games in Turin. Documents showed he had tipped off the secret police that a fellow skater was about to defect, as well as providing them with information about Katarina Witt.

Steuer was in the pay of the Stasi for four years.

When the news broke, the German Olympic Committee dropped the coach from the 2006 team. The German skating federation, and Steuer, disagreed with the decision. A court case ensued, and the coach was allowed to travel to Italy.

Four years later, Steuer’s inclusion in the party here was not so controversial.

Though the coach, now aged 43, is here, he is here under straightened circumstances. Under rules laid down by the Berlin government, sporting bodies are not allowed to pay anyone with links to the former communist regime.

Some sources claim Steuer receives money from Savchenko and Szolkowy, who receive government funding. Yet their relationship with the coach may soon end. Steuer is reported to have given the federation an ultimatum: he will withdraw his services after the Games unless he gets paid.

“That isn’t quite right,” Steuer now claims. “I can’t do anything if this (non-payment) goes on. But if something changes, everything is possible.”

As for his own dark past, the coach said he was naive, that he was manipulated by an older Stasi minder, that it did not occur to him that he was doing anything wrong until it was too late.

Defago's downhill day

DIDIER DEFAGO eclipsed his more fancied Swiss team-mates to win the showcase downhill at Whistler yesterday.

Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal took the silver medal with American showman Bode Miller ripping down the gleaming Dave Murray piste for bronze on a day when the pre-race favourites ended up as also-rans.

With Didier Cuche tipped for glory, despite a thumb injury, and Carlo Janka another leading contender, it was the other Didier who became the first Swiss to win a men's Olympic Alpine title since Pirmin Zurbriggen in Calgary in 1988.

"It hasn't sunk in yet," said the 32-year-old after seizing his first Olympic medal in his third Games.

Miller's bronze made up for his failure to medal in Turin four years ago and added to the two silvers he won in Salt Lake City in 2002.