How a 15-Year-Old Girl Became the Leading Actress in a Russian Doping Case

With a soft drum roll, Kamila Valieva keeps her arms stretched behind her and her chest out. She concentrates on the long freestyle that she has practiced hundreds of times, but now prefers to perform flawlessly on the highest stage; The Olympic Winter Games. She is fifteen years old, born in 2006, in Kazan, Russia. She started figure skating at the age of three. Her hobbies are dancing and drawing.

A few short breaths, and then she begins to move gracefully to the rhythm of the Boléro, the classical piece of music by the French composer Maurice Ravel.

What she shows in the minutes that follow is unparalleled. Valieva is only the first woman – strictly speaking the first girl – to successfully land quadruple jumps at the Games; first the quadruple Salchow, then the quadruple Toe Loop combined with a triple. She falls on the third quad she tries, but it doesn’t matter. The points are in. Thanks in part to her, the team of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) wins – Russian athletes are not allowed to fly under their own flag until December this year because of the state-controlled doping program during the Sochi (2014) Games, which started three years ago. the light came – the first gold in figure skating. For the United States and Japan. Valieva is also top favorite for individual gold next Tuesday. She can become one of the stars of the Games.

‘Procedural problem’

A day later, on February 8, the ceremony at Medal Plaza is suddenly postponed due to a ‘procedural problem’ with one of the Russian skaters. American media in particular jump on top of it. In the press rooms they want to know after training whether their compatriots will claim the gold if it turns out that Russia has cheated. They certainly will.

The medal standings of the Winter Olympics

But it is two British journalists from the website Insidethegames.biz who report that it concerns a positive doping testt, of a minor speed skater. And that can only be one: Kamila Valieva. Her name quickly circulated in headlines on the internet, but none of the parties involved — the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the ISU skating federation, and the Russian anti-doping agency Rusada — would comment on the reports.

Because Valieva is not yet 16, she is a according to the International Anti-Doping Code ‘protected person† This means that her identity will not be officially disclosed in the event of a doping violation, and that she will enjoy protection as long as she is a minor. The sports world is holding its breath, especially the Russians, whose sporting achievements are already viewed with suspicion.

Meanwhile, Valieva continues to train. It’s a guess at what goes on behind the scenes. When the two Brits go to training to redress, they are threatened by Russian colleagues, who say they can tear them to pieces or put something in their tea.

Medicine for a heart condition

Only last Friday there will be clarity. Because Valieva has now been publicly exposed, the IOC is forced to an explanation to give. It does this through the International Testing Agency (ITA), a body that handles doping cases during the Games. Valieva appears to have tested positive for trimetazidine, a medicine against a heart condition, on December 25 during the Russian championships. In athletes, it could promote blood circulation and thus the ability to recover. That is why it is on the doping list.

The results of the test would not have come in until February 8, one day after the team match that gave Russia gold. Rusada says the coronavirus has caused delays.

Valieva was provisionally suspended, but the next day she challenged that decision with the Russian anti-doping agency. And she was acquitted by that in the evening, so that she can still participate next Tuesday. In a statement, Rusada says Valieva has successfully passed all doping tests before and after December 25. And that she only tested negative in Beijing. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke of “a misunderstanding” on Friday.

The IOC did not give up, and appealed to the international sports tribunal CAS, which has its office in Beijing during the Games. Lawyers must decide before Tuesday the fate of Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old girl who came to the Games in Moscow after years under the strictest possible training regime to reap success, only to receive the scorn of the world instead, and the became the center of yet another Russian doping scandal. Pending the final verdict, she may continue to train. But that didn’t go well on Friday.

She completed her full long freestyle, including all jumps, on the training track of the International Capital Stadium in Beijing. But unlike last week, when there didn’t seem to be a speck in the air, she fell hard on the ice three times. Afterwards she fought back her tears. When she reached the exit of the track, her coach strode off angrily. Her choreographer gave her a jacket and a cuddly cow, which she carried down the track under her arms.

Sambo 70 in Moscow

Kamila Valieva has been training for years at Sambo 70, the figure skating school in Moscow where Eteri Tutberidze (47) is head coach. The Russian with Georgian and American roots was a figure skater herself until she had to stop competitive sports early due to problems with her back and started touring with an American theater company. In 1995, she narrowly survived a bombing in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. Three years later she returned to Russia.

Tutberidze is known for her ruthless training methods, but has been delivering Olympic champions for years. Athletes who are only briefly in the spotlight, two, three years, and then disappear from the scene again. Disengaged, injured, mentally broken. The list of examples is long.

Yulia Lipnitskaya became an Olympic champion in her own country in 2014 at the age of 15, but stopped skating three years later because she was suffering from anorexia. Alina Zagitova was also fifteen when she won gold and silver at the Games in South Korea four years ago. She has not skated competitions for two years and has said in interviews that she was not allowed to drink a sip of water in Peyongchang of Tutberidze, so that she would maintain her weight. Other underage figure fighters suffered bone fractures trying to make it to the Games and were told by Tutberidze that she was disappointed. She made no secret of that in interviews. She did not like working with “one-time champions”, who in turn were forced to leave the sport disillusioned before the age of eighteen.

Until Valieva’s positive test, no Sambo 70 skater was officially associated with doping, although in 2019 there was quite a bit of buzz about the things Anastasia Shabotova said during a live session on Instagram. She claimed that the skaters of the school were “obviously” on doping. “To perform consistently you just have to get the right dope,” she said. Shabotova was then bullied away, but there were also girls who stood up for her. In Beijing she represents Ukraine, her mother’s country. She is still only sixteen years old.

The complete program of the Winter Olympics

If it is up to the Medical Commission of the skating federation ISU, that is no longer possible from the 2023-2024 season. In a draft of a list of recommendations to be discussed at the annual ISU convention in June this year, which NRC that committee advocates raising the minimum age for figure skaters at the World Championships and Olympic Games gradually over two seasons from fifteen to seventeen years. Figure skating is the only sport at the Winter Games in which children as young as fifteen are allowed to participate.

The paper cites studies of gymnastics showing that girls who are subjected to heavy training at a young age and who suffer from malnutrition and stress enter puberty two years later than their peers outside the sport. Just like gymnastics, figure skating is such a technical sport that it is preferably learned at a very young age. By the age of seven, 95 percent of the nervous system is developed. The foundation must have already been laid.

In both sports, a low body weight and a frail appearance are seen as ideals. With narrow shoulders and hips, it is easier to turn around the longitudinal axis during jumps. Figure skating, like gymnastics, is a so-called early development sport. The problem is that the bone density of young figure skaters is not yet that high. As a result, the risk of fractures and other serious injuries due to the major impact of, for example, multiple jumps on a young body is great.

The Dutch skating association KNSB already made an attempt in 2018 to convince the ISU to raise the minimum age. That was then stopped by Israel and Russia, says an official of the union. Smaller art-fight countries such as Norway and Iceland were ahead of it at the time. Just like Canada.

Since then, support has grown considerably. The ISU Athletes Committee held a survey among figure skaters last year. More than 86 percent of them indicated that they were in favor of an increase in the minimum age. A decision on this will be made in Phuket, Thailand, in June.

That comes too late for Kamila Valieva. Much damage has already been done to her. The CAS will consider her case this weekend. And about her future. A verdict is expected on Monday