Winter Olympics: Wayne Gretzky must have enjoyed the isolation and quiet of the long flight from Toronto to Italy. He had hardly time for an espresso in Turin before he faced a crowd only slightly smaller than he was accustomed to during his playing days.

The notion of the cool and squeaky-clean Gretzky starring in a gambling scandal was too much for the masses to resist.

Gretzky has tried his best to distance himself from a story which appeared in a gossip magazine which suggested he and his wife, Janet Jones, were fond of gambling at casinos and had entered a multi-million-dollar gambling ring run by Rick Tocchet, a former hockey professional with the Philadelphia Flyers. The problem for Gretzky, in addition to working with the Canadian team, is that he is the owner of a professional hockey franchise, the Phoenix Coyotes, and Tocchet is his assistant coach.

New Jersey police have arrested Tocchet, the NHL are to carry out an investigation into the matter and police visited the Gretzky home last Sunday, something which left the Canadian "sick to his stomach".

"It doesn't involve me," he repeated again last night in a packed interview room far beneath the smooth rink where other nations competed.

"I am not involved and I have been saying this for seven days. And quite frankly, this is the last I am going to talk about it. The concern here is about playing hockey. And if we don't win, I'll be blamed, but I've been blamed for plenty of things in the past. It won't change my life."

If Gretzky is indeed innocent of all misdemeanours, this episode is another example of the way celebrities from the world of sport can be all but prosecuted on mere rumour.

At the very least, however, it seems he should have been more vigilant in keeping tabs on his coaching staff. The allegations have been taken seriously enough for several commentators to suggest that Gretzky should not have travelled to Turin.

And at home, Ken Dryden, the former Montreal Canadiens goalkeeper turned politician, has stepped up to defend his countryman. New prime minister Stephen Harper quickly followed with his endorsement. Although Gretzky's skills were not enough to help Canada break a 50-year Olympic gold hockey streak which made a mockery of their prowess at the sport, he led his country to victory as coach in Salt Lake City with the sweetest of victories against the US.

Afterwards, Gretzky was presented with a Canadian dollar (the colloquial term for which is a "loonie"), which had been hidden under the ice at the Salt Lake venue for the tournament by the chief engineer at the venue.

The coin was later enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, yet another symbol of Gretzky's gilded career.

That he should be dogged by a gambling scandal on the eve of the Olympics is unseemly for an athlete who always behaved with impeccable courtesy through his playing career. He admitted last night that the prospect of these rumours eclipsing the performances of other Canadian winter Olympians in Turin upset him.

"Absolutely. I don't like to overshadow anyone. And I would hope and expect that the athletes who have worked their butt off get the accolades they deserve. But back in 1998, there was a worry that the NHL players would overpower the skaters and curlers by their presence in the Village. And we made sure that didn't happen."

On the ice, he was the most elusive and graceful of players. Wayne Gretzky will need to call upon all his old skills just to skate his way through the rest of these Olympics.