The Times - UK (2022-02-16)

56 Wednesday February 16 2022 | the times

Sport

5

A

t just before 2pm UK time

yesterday, the Olympic

movement died. This was

the time when Kamila

Valieva, who has tested

positive for a banned drug, took to the

rink to compete for a fictional

construct called the Russian Olympic

Committee — one imagined into

existence so that Russian athletes

could compete in the Games despite

their own government orchestrating a

doping regime of chilling scale and

consequence; one that defrauded all

clean competitors and made fools of

the watching world.

Valieva’s routine took place against

a political backdrop too. A backdrop

in which Vladimir Putin, who signed

off the state-sanctioned cheating, has

posted more than 100,000 troops to

This is what it looks like when you are

15 years old and you have tested positive

for drugs, when the world has you

under a microscope and you are

performing in the Olympic Games. You

spin a triple axel and you step out on

landing. One jump, one mistake. And

you are still the best in the world.

Kamila Valieva took the lead in the

women’s singles figure skating yester-

day and there is no one who expects her

to relinquish it when the competition is

completed tomorrow. She is that far

ahead. She has raised this game to such

unprecedented levels that she can test

positive, deliver a shaky performance

(by her standards), break down in tears

at the finish — and still be ahead of the

rest of the world.

Valieva has been under unimagina-

ble pressure here and endured a level of

scrutiny unlike anyone else at these

Winter Games. It says something about

her — her toughness? her mental

strength? — that she can come through

that and still be in pole position.

Meanwhile, the discontent and the

thunder claps still echo all around her.

There were fellow athletes who would

not hide their derision. Others in the

Capital Indoor Arena were calling this

the sport’s darkest day.

The only surprise among it all was

that we did not finish with all three

Russians atop the leaderboard. The

teenage team-mates, dubbed “The

Quad Squad” because of the world-

beating jumps they can execute, finished

overnight in first, second and fourth.

Kaori Sakamoto, of Japan, managed

to squeeze in between them, though the

upset was less the standard of her

routine than the fact that Alexandra

Trusova, the third Russian, fell on the

first jump in her routine — the triple

axel, again — to let her in.

The Quad Squad are trained by Eteri

Tutberidze, a coach now infamous for

both the brilliant skaters she produces

and the broken ones she discards. Of

Doping and sportswashing? Olympics is now hopelessly

Matthew Syedyed

followed by yet more appeasement.

Why on earth is Russia competing

at all, given what we know about

sport in that country? Have we

forgotten the Sochi Games, where

clean urine samples were swapped

with dirty ones through the ruse

of a concealed hole in the doping

laboratory, masterminded by the

Federal Security Service (FSB)?

The athletes’ pressure group Global

Athlete put the point well: “Russia has

never been incentivised to reform

because sport leaders favoured

politics over principle and rebranding

over banning. The doping of minor

athletes must be stopped. Any

country that systematically dopes its

athletes cannot be allowed to

participate in international sport.”

The IOC is a willing stooge to all

this, of course, the ultimate in useful

idiocy. Despite the glossy PR and

slick communications strategy,

though, most right-minded people

know what is really going on, and

why. Think back to late 2013, when

the wily Putin took note of his

cratering approval ratings, due to

falling oil prices and massive

corruption. At the time, only

61 per cent of Russians liked what they

saw from the Russian leader, a

stunningly low tally given that he in

effect controls the media.

It was only after Sochi, when doped

Russian athletes topped the medal

table with 11 golds, that things started

to turn around. I suspect that future

historians will see his rising numbers

(the rating soared to above 80 per cent

within months) as a key factor in

Putin’s invasion of Crimea not long

after, an annexation that led to yet

more patriotic tumult. And, on this

very point, who knows what

calculations are taking place right

now in the mind of President Xi, with

China having surpassed its record

medal count at a Winter Games.

This is why it is time for anyone

who loves the Games to stand up and

say: “Enough is enough.” We have to

finally acknowledge the damage done

to Olympics by the likes of Thomas

Bach, the IOC president, and his

willingness to provide cover for the

CCP in their treatment of Peng Shuai;

not to mention Lord Coe, the World

Athletics president, who has bent

the border of Ukraine, showcasing (in

case the International Olympic

Committee hasn’t yet got the picture)

that he cares not a jot about rules,

sporting or otherwise. Meanwhile, as

Valieva skated, you could see a

different dimension too: the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP) using this

Winter Olympics to sportswash

cultural genocide in Xinjiang, perhaps

in preparation for an attack on

Taiwan.

I just think we should be honest.

The Games have shown us that this

sham of a spectacle is only

tangentially a sporting event. This is a

festival where doped athletes can

compete, where medal ceremonies

can be cancelled and where judicial

bodies can make perverse decisions,

as if infected by the same madness

that has overtaken the broader

Olympic community.

How could it be said that Valieva

might suffer “irreparable harm” if she

did not compete? What about the

harm of a child potentially being

given a cocktail of three different

drugs by coaches, nutritionists or

whoever else? What about the harm

of a teenager competing in the glare

of the world and then having her

medals seized retrospectively? What

about the harm to clean athletes

competing against someone with an

unfair advantage? What about the

harm done to the Games, or to sport?

And what of the message sent to

coaches around the world that young

people are given special dispensations

when accused of doping? Won’t that

offer a green light to the psychopaths

who use coaching as a means to abuse

young people, often with autocratic

states egging them on? Have we such

short memories of what happened

during communism in East Germany,

where Putin spent so much time as a

KGB agent, young girls force-fed blue

pills that they were told were vitamins

but turned out to be androgenic

steroids that ruined their lives?

This is why this saga reads like the

last rites for the IOC, a story that

showcases in chilling detail why this

corrupt organisation needs to be

ripped up, eradicated from memory,

so that we can start afresh. A story of

an inexorable drift to disaster, scandal

by sordid scandal, appeasement

Tears, rancour – and skills no

the past five skaters to break the (com-

bined) world-record score, her trio here

are three of them, and Valieva is the

best of all. She has broken that world

record three times in five months.

Even having snagged that triple axel

in her short programme, the score she

posted was better than the personal

best of everyone else in the field. That is

down to the level of difficulty she sets

herself, though the raging anger

around the ice rink suggested that it

was down to a lot more. There are a lot

of outstanding athletes here who will

not get near this podium.

In the middle of this competition,

they are reluctant to stoke the flames,

yet they also want to share an opinion.

This, for instance, was Mariah Bell, the

United States skater: “I am a huge advo-

cate for clean sport, and I’m 25, and I’m

really proud of how I’ve led my career.”

Or Josefin Taljegard, of Sweden: “I

think fair play is important.” Or

Natasha McKay, the British skater: “I

wish it was a level playing field and it’s

not.” Every comment is heavily loaded.

Less subtle was Adam Rippon, a

former US figure skater and Bell’s

coach. “This ruins the integrity of the

Olympics,” he said. Of Valieva: “The

team around her are child abusers.”

That last comment is also pertinent,

as the Valieva scandal has triggered a

debate about whether there should be a

minimum age limit before minors are

allowed to join open competition. So

this story hasn’t been solely a doping

scandal. It has been about young

athletes and whether this should be a

sport for adults or prepubescents.

The first athlete out on the ice was

Anastasiia Shabotova, a 16-year-old

skating for Ukraine. This is the same

Shabotova who used to represent

Russia but, aged 13, gave an Instagram

Q&A in which she said that Tutber-

idze’s athletes were using performance-

enhancing drugs. Her career as a “Rus-

sian” came to an end soon after that.

So, no, she didn’t have much of an

opinion about Valieva — because she

has long been her friend. And neither

did she want to opine on the Ukraine-

Russia border crisis — because she had

so long been a Muscovite.

When yesterday’s competition was

over, Anna Shcherbakova, who is lying

second behind Valieva, gave a press

conference. “I will not say anything

about this situation,” she said about

Valieva. Asked about Tutberidze and

her coaching methods, she said that she

had been with her since she was nine,

that “I like this coach” and “we are very

fruitful working together”.

Among Tutberidze’s achievements is

that her group have been through this

ordeal and yet she has still got them to

perform. Part of that ordeal for Valieva

was having to stay up until beyond 2am

on Sunday night to attend her six-hour

doping disciplinary hearing.

“These days have been very difficult

for me, emotionally,” Valieva said on

Russian TV. “I am happy but emotion-

ally fatigued. That is why these tears of

joy and a little bit of sadness.”

Some extraordinary evidence from

the disciplinary hearing emerged when

it was revealed that Valieva’s defence

was built on the suggestion that the

illegal trimetazidine found in her

system could be traced to her grandfa-

ther, who uses the drug for his heart

condition. Valieva’s mother and lawyer,

who attended the hearing by video link,

said that Valieva had shared a glass with

her grandfather on Christmas Day and

that his saliva may have been the cause

of her contamination.

Somehow, despite all this, Valieva

was able to deliver a world-beating per-

formance in competition. The opening

statement of her routine was the triple

axel. Twice in practice, five hours

before she was to compete, she tried the

triple axel and failed to land it.

When she stepped on to the ice again,

she was applauded by the crowd. Then,

when she started her programme, she

failed to land the triple axel again. It

wasn’t a tumble, only a clumsy landing

and a foot out to maintain balance.

Was that the pressure showing? If it

was, she quickly put it behind her. She

completed the rest of her programme

without error — and finished top. And

yet the tears that followed showed how

far she was from being satisfied.

Throughout all this, you have to

remember that this is a 15-year-old. You

have to pinch yourself, acknowledge

that this is something quite astonishing,

that it arguably should never have been

allowed to happen, that the world is

raging, and the 15-year-old has some-

how survived. She only put a foot out.

Owen Slot

Chief Sports

Writer, Beijing

MEDALS TABLE

1 Norway 12 7 7 26

2 Germany 96318

3 United States 76417

4 Austria 66416

5 Netherlands 64313

6 China 64212

7 Sweden 53311

8 Switzerland 50510

9 ROC 47920

10 France 37212

G S B Total

Sport Winter Olympics