IOC President Thomas Bach expressed sympathy for Kamila Valieva after her bitter Olympic final and sharply criticized the environment with the Russian figure skater’s coach.
“When I saw how she was received by those around her, with what seemed to me like an enormous cold – I shivered down my spine to see what was happening,” Thomas Bach reported on Friday. “Instead of comforting her, instead of helping her after what happened, you could feel how freezing the atmosphere was. Experiencing such distance just by looking at that person’s body language only made it worse in the imagination.”
After days of doping whirl and a lead from the short program, gold favorite Kamila Valieva made several mistakes in her freestyle figure skating on Thursday evening and finished fourth. The 15-year-old received no consolation from her coach Eteri Tutberidze, but rather harsh and disturbing words.
Bach reported that he was “very disappointed and upset” when he watched the figure skating freestyle program on television and spoke of a “condescending gesture”. “Can you be so cold towards your own athletes?” He had thought about it, said the head of the International Olympic Committee. “None of this gives me any special confidence in this environment of Kamila – neither in relation to the situation that has played out in the past, nor in the future.”
Bach asked how underage athletes aged 15 would be dealt with in the future and specifically addressed Valieva’s situation again. “I can only wish for her that she has the support, the support from her family, the support from friends and ultimately from people who will help her to put this enormously difficult situation behind her.”
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Russian politician on Bach statements: “Inappropriate and wrong”
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Chernienko has dismissed IOC chief Bach’s statements about Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva and those around her. “We are deeply disappointed to see an IOC President spinning his own fictional narrative of our athletes’ feelings and then presenting them publicly as the voice of the IOC,” Chernienko told insidethegames on Friday during the Beijing Winter Games. .
Chernienko, head of organization for the Sochi 2014 games, called Bach’s words “inappropriate and wrong”. For all athletes, the Olympic Games are the “highlight of professional sport” combined with “the hopes and dreams of an entire nation”. This is a “known pressure for the athletes, and that’s what drives them with their fighting spirit,” said Chernienko.
A positive doping test by Valieva on December 25 only became known during the Winter Games in Beijing. The Cas judges nevertheless allowed her to start in the Olympic women’s singles in view of her status as a minor and the incomplete doping process.