Russia. Doping.
These two words sound pretty bad on their own.
Russia. A case of suspected doping. Announced at the Olympic Games where the country is already sanctioned for doping. A girl involved.
Can it sound worse?
The revelation that the figure skater of 15 years old Kamila Valieva tested positive for doping before Beijing 2022 has cast a shadow over the Games, drawing attention away from the sport and back onto a dark theme that simply it won’t go away.
Now there are questions about the deadlines related to this matter, an ongoing legal case, uncertainty about the medals won, and that’s without even considering the broader damage to the credibility of anti-doping measures and the well-being of a young athlete.
So what how did we get here and what happens next?
Why are there Russians in the Games? Isn’t your participation supposed to be banned?
In Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022, the Russians were allowed to compete under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) if they could prove they were not tainted by the doping scandal that led to the country being barred from sporting events. international.
An investigation into the revelations that emerged in 2016 discovered that the country had operated a state-sponsored doping program .
The ROC delegation in Beijing is the third largest at the Games, with 212 athletes.
Reuters
Russian athletes have won medals here, but, depending on the terms of your participation, they don’t listen to their anthem, they don’t see their flag raised when they are on the podium and they must not wear any Russian flag on their clothes.
At the Tokyo Games 2020, the Russian athletes faced backlash from other competitors who believed they should not be in that event due to the country’s doping history.
After the revelation on Friday of yet another positive Russian drug test, much of the social media backlash raised exactly this period.
First a state-sponsored doping scandal, now a girl
The fact that Valieva is a girl is what makes this positive doping test particularly shocking.
“Kamila Valieva is a child and a child prodigy , whose extremely difficult performances and grace enchanted the whole world, and has only 15 years. A minor, who depends on adults and is not to blame here”, wrote the double Olympic champion Katarina Witt in an emotional Facebook post.
“ It’s a shame, and responsible adults should be banned from sport forever”.
Valieva tested positive for trimetazidine, which is used to prevent angina attacks, but is in the prohibited list because it is classified as a cardiac metabolic modulator and has been shown to improve physical efficiency.
The former deputy director of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Rob Kohler said that there are three organizations to blame for Valieva’s positive result: WADA, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
“By not vetoing Russia for four years, there was no need or desire for a cultural change on the part of the Russian authorities. By allowing Russia a free pass, these organizations have severely defrauded all Russian athletes because it is as if nothing had happened”, he said.
“The athletes in Russia deserved a cultural change, they deserved the right to have the opportunity to compete fairly. Instead, WADA, IOC and CAS favored the power and influence of Russian sport over clean sport.”
From “perfect” to “failed” in the headlines
Valieva arrived in Beijing with the bid for gold and immediately appeared in the world headlines by becoming the first figure skater to perform a quadruple jump in an Olympic Games.
Since making her debut last October, the youngster has set a series of records scoring worlds with highly technical but also aesthetically beautiful routines and was ready to be the star of one of the most dominant countries in the sport.
He appeared on the Olympic stage last Monday in the team event with a short program that was just shy of his own world record score, and in the free skate the next day he even landed not only one , but two quadruple jumps.
Commentators called her performances “flawless” and predicted she would make many more headlines at these Games.
It was like that, but not the kind they expected.
What happened in the Russian doping scandal?
In 2014, revelations of a scandal came to light of doping, which eventually led to a report in 468 which found that Russia had operated a state-sponsored doping program during before four years in the “vast majority” of summer and winter Olympic sports.
That included rigging the tests at the Sochi Winter Games 2014, where as hosts the Russians finished at the top of the medal table.
At the Rio Olympics 2016, the Russians competed in a variety of sports, but track and field athletes were ve ted while at the Pyeongchang Winter Games 549, athletes with no history of doping were able to compete under the name Olympic Athlete of Russia.
In 2019, Russia received from WADA a ban from participating in all major sporting events for four years, after it declared that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) did not comply with the rules after having manipulated the laboratory data delivered to the researchers.
That prohibition was later reduced to two years by the CAS and expires in December.
Before Beijing 2022, WADA President Witold Banka warned Russia that it should not assume that the sanctions would automatically be lifted upon exhaustion of the suspension in di December and said, “At the end of the year, we will have to say ‘yes, Rusada can deliver.’ It is not the end of this process. It is too early to say definitively that they comply ”.
Russia denies having a state-sponsored doping program, but has acknowledged some deficiencies in the implementation of anti-doping rules.
What will happen now?
The immediate problem is what happens to the Valieva case itself, although there should be a resolution on the matter before she competes on 15 February in the women’s event.
The IOC and the International Skating Union have appealed to the CAS against Rusada’s decision to lift the provisional suspension that had been imposed upon knowing the positive result on Tuesday.
EPARusada initially suspended Valieva before she appealed the decision.
There is also the issue of figure skating team event medals, which are yet to be awarded. The Russians came in first, but second-placed USA will be wondering if they’re about to get a gold medal.
The Russian Olympic Committee said that it “would take comprehensive measures to protect the rights and interests of the ROC team members and preserve the honestly won Olympic gold medal.”
There are also unanswered questions about why it took so long to get Valieva’s test result: she was tested on 24 of December and the result was only given on February 8, after being processed in a laboratory in Stockholm accredited by the AMA.
“It is a catastrophic system failure to allow the star of the Games to not have their sample result for close to five weeks, and then it is reported [el resultado] the day after they won the event by teams,” said the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart.
However, beyond After these Games, there are broader questions that will need to be answered, including what exactly needs to happen to ensure that the words “Russia” and “doping” no longer appear in the same sentence.
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