The Russian doping shadow is hanging over the Olympics again – and this time it’s about a child. The IOC is frantically trying to get the situation under control.
When the gloomy suspicion of doping finally reached the Olympic city of Beijing, the child prodigy practiced his quadruple jumps. But Kamila Valieva didn’t want to succeed in the freestyle for Ravel’s world-famous Bolero, she fell twice on the ice and disappeared into the catacombs without a word; face hidden behind a sweater.
On Monday the Russian was a celebrated star, now she is the focus of a sports court dispute.
For Germany’s figure skating legend Katarina Witt, this is a “scandal” because Valieva, this “radiant comet” who shot “into the orbit of the international skating world”, is only 15 years old.
Another child who, after a positive doping test at Christmas for the metabolism modulator trimetazidine, is suddenly supposed to be proof of the unteachable Russians, who are still banished as a nation after their doping scandal at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
Doping sample withheld on purpose?
At least a legal thriller is developing on the stage of the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing: The IOC against the Russian anti-doping agency, the Order of the Rings, which is often criticized as being too lenient against the Russian anti-doping authorities. They acquitted Valieva despite a positive sample that was taken before the games but only became known in China. The CAS must now decide – Valieva’s start in the individual competition is at stake. At least.
“If anything, the adults responsible should be banned from sport forever!” Witt wrote on Facebook: “What they may have expected of her cannot be beaten in terms of inhumanity and makes my athlete’s heart cry.” The young girl, “who is enchanting the whole world with her athleticism and grace” is “not to blame”.
The Russians see it similarly, who also expressed doubts about the positive test from December. “It seems that someone withheld the sample until the end of the team competition,” said Stanislav Posdnakov, head of the National Olympic Committee ROC, adding that it was “strange” that the sample from St. Petersburg, where Valieva was tested, lasted until anti-doping laboratory to Stockholm “almost a month”.
The RUSADA somewhat undermined this theory. The laboratory in Stockholm justified “the delays in the analysis and the announcement of the results with a wave of corona cases”, RUSADA announced on Friday.
Witt hopes: “So that it doesn’t break”
After the European Championships in January, however, Valieva was negative, as in Beijing, where she led her team to gold on Monday, led the ROC. But the medals stayed in the closet and the award ceremony was cancelled. The rumor mill was churning before the international test agency ITA, responsible for the tests at the Olympics on behalf of the IOC, spoke up on Friday and confirmed the suspicion of doping.
The RUSADA had already suspended Valieva and taken it back again. The International Olympic Committee, which according to spokesman Mark Adams “pursues a 100% anti-doping policy”, felt under so much pressure that it did not even wait for the explanation of the Russian doping hunters before, like the world ice skating association ISU and the world -Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appealed. The judgment of the Sports Court CAS is expected before February 15.
Then the individual competition starts in Beijing, where Valieva was one of the big favorites. That winter, up until Beijing, she had won every major competition she took part in – thanks to tremendous jumping power and sensitive landings. “No doping” in this world could have helped her with these quadruple jumps, wrote Kati Witt, who hopes that Valieva has “enough people” at her side “so that she doesn’t break down.”