Beijing Winter Olympics, Valieva mystery: the Russian baby star and suspected doping

Mysteries. Voices that run after each other. Encrypted messages between diplomats after mutual accusations. And an award ceremony that, at least for now, we don’t have to do. It seems like a spy story told in a successful book, and instead it is only the first fiery case of the Chinese Olympics, which even involves Kamila Valieva, the phenomenal fifteen-year-old Russian figure skating, among the most anticipated stars of all the Games.

Legal consultation

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The facts: on Tuesday at 21 Chinese, two in the afternoon in Italy, the medals of the team event will be awarded, with the success of the Russian team (which competes as Roc, the Russian Olympic Committee, given the suspension of all national teams until to December 16) in front of the United States and Japan, but the podium remains desolately and sensationally empty: “The delay is linked to a matter with legal implications, but you can bet your last dollar that we will try to solve it as soon as possible”, Mark Adams, a spokesman for the IOC, announced a few minutes later. And instead a whole day goes by without clarity, while the assumptions chase each other: someone talks about the ineligibility of an athlete, a Russian newspaper instead puts forward the hypothesis that the authorities are investigating the death threats against Andrei Mozalev, who competed before house idol Yuzuru Hanyu and from this he was accused of having voluntarily provoked a hole in the ice. But when the news was made official at lunchtime yesterday that four Russian skaters did not show up for the training session, the most accredited rumors concerning the whole affair, namely that a case of doping had been configured, gush out unstoppable. And the words used by Adams, those “legal implications”, lead to only one culprit, the golden girl of figure skating, Kamila Valieva, not by chance in the quartet of those who did not leave the Village to go to train. The fresh European champion, as well as the world record holder in the total score, would have had a dubious doping test and at that point it became mandatory to consult the lawyers, for two reasons: first of all to determine whether it was a check carried out out of competition or in the context of the Olympic competition; and then because the alleged accused is under 16 years old (she will turn them on April 26) and therefore would fall into the category of “protected persons”: according to the rules of the World Anti-Doping Code, in fact, an athlete who is under the age of 16 at the moment of the violation cannot be formally identified.

The reactions

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If the indiscretion is confirmed, and we will know in these hours, it would be another blow to Russia, for years under the crosshairs of the world anti-doping authorities for its illicit practices. Above all, it would deprive the Olympics of one of the absolute protagonists, a champion who, although very young, is already rewriting the history of her sport. La Valieva, the first woman ever to bring a quadruple jump in the Olympic program, had been the driving force of the team, dominating both the short and the free program, and barely set out to dominate the individual competition from the height of technical difficulties and of an elegance of execution unattainable for all the others. Meanwhile, the spokeswoman for the Russian figure skating Federation, Olga Yermolina, told the state news agency Tass that the whole delegation is “awaiting official information on this problem”, while coach Tatyana Tarasova has flatly denied the rumors about an alleged case of doping: “It is not possible, they keep pointing the finger at us, but we are clean and we have passed all the tests successfully”. Obviously, the intervention of the Moscow government could not be missing from Dmitry Peskov, official spokesman for Vladimir Putin: “We await official statements before judging media sources. In the meantime, we are waiting for some clarification from our sports managers and from the IOC to understand ”. But the earthquake already seems out of control.