THE RUSSIAN SKATING DEBACLE: A VITAL VICTORY FOR THE AMERICAN WAY
The Beijing Olympics won’t leave many memories, but the state-sponsored doping manipulation of a gifted 15-year-old skater does shame Vladimir Putin as the dictator prepares to invade Ukraine
Only those addicted to snow porn, bored by “Billions’’ or dodging anti-vaxxers are watching the Beijing Olympics. Yet, in the final days, a small audience was treated to a redeeming reminder about American virtue. Say what you will about our cultural and political tug-of-wars, our social warts and pockmarks, but at least we aren’t poisoning 15-year-old figure skaters with performance-enhancing drug cocktails as we prepare to invade a neighboring country with force.
There is no need to educate young people about Cold Wars anymore. We’re in one, with no evidence more disgracefully apparent than Vladimir Putin’s stink-eyed gaze at Ukraine amid the continuing corruption in his sports programs. The International Olympic Committee deserved the horror-on-ice that shook the world from its equilibrium last week, having obediently softened the four-year ban resulting from Putin’s elaborate, state-sponsored doping scheme and allowing hundreds of his athletes to keep competing under the Russian Olympic Committee name.
By bullying IOC president Thomas Bach through time, Putin enabled a veteran skate coach named Eteri Tutberidze to endanger the health and mental well-being of gifted Kamila Valieva. Now, we hope the teenager survives her hellish experience and can lead a safe and sane life. Valieva was poised to make history at the Winter Games, as a queen of the quad jump, but she was victimized by the adults who exploited her back home. Growing up Russian, she had no choice but to obey orders and take three assorted “heart medications,’’ including trimetazidine, which is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
She tested positive on Christmas Day and, of course, the result wasn’t reported until last week. In any honorable competition, she would have been removed from her events. But not in Putin’s world of ROC and roll, which influences everyone in his way, even the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which ruled Valieva could keep competing while allowing that trimetazidine might have entered his system by accident — even via her grandfather, who testified to that effect on FaceTime. In doing so, CAS ignored WADA’s anti-doping code. Crazy is not the word for all of this alphabet soup. Valieva continued to skate and immediately became the biggest story — and scandal — in China. Did anyone consider how she’d handle the scrutiny, the hatred, the burden of moving forward in the long program when her rivals wanted her shipped back to Moscow? No, she was a piece of meat with a side of borscht.
Which explains the disturbing scene when this all-time talent, scared and distracted, fell twice in an error-filled performance set to “Bolero.’’ Shaken and in tears, Valieva needed a place to hide, a big hug from her coach and the comfort of every stuffed animal in the building. Instead, Tutberidze shouted her down on live TV. “Why did you let it go?” she asked in Russia. “Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel.”
Witness the Putin Way. Not that he cared, because another Russian skater, 17-year-old Anna Shcherbakova, won the gold medal. But as the New York Times pointed out, she, too, cried, alluding to Valieva’s fourth-place finish when she admitted, “I feel this emptiness inside.’’ The silver medalist, teenaged teammate Alexandra Trusova, was angry as she joined the tear-fest. Thinking she had won, she shouted at rinkside, “I hate it! I don’t want to do anything in figure skating ever in my life! Everyone has a gold medal, and I don’t!’’
All of which sickened Travis Tygart, U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO, who told USA Today via text: “On one hand, my heart breaks for her because of the despicable acts of the adults in her life and the catastrophic failures of the Russian and IOC-run systems that permanently cast a dark cloud over her performances. It’s certain these events weighed heavily on her and hopefully she will get the support she needs going forward. On the other hand, all of us who value clean sport are sick to our stomachs because these failures have tragically robbed clean athletes of their incredible sacrifice and Olympic dreams.”
Said Witold Banka, president of WADA: “Speaking generally about the doping of children from my personal perspective — and from WADA’s perspective — is that it’s evil and unforgivable. I think that the people who are giving doping to children are killers of clean sport.’’
Suddenly, every proud moment in Beijing — including the triumph of U.S. figure skater Nathan Chen over his 2018 nerves in Pyeongchang, the continued stardom of American snowboarder Chloe Kim, the long-awaited redemption of 36-year-old U.S. snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis — was a footnote to a sporting form of Russian Roulette. The tragedy of Kamila Valieva overwhelmed national allegiances. You could be American and feel horrible for her, as NBC commentators Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir made clear. A Russian TV analyst preferred to blame the system.
“Respected sports officials, you have destroyed the most talented figure skater in the world,” said Andrei Zhurankov, who was referring to the arbitration panel when he should have aimed at the Russian machine, though not without Siberian repercussions.
Said the panel in a 41-page judgment, after the event: “None of this is the fault of the athlete, and it has put her in a remarkably difficult position where she faces a lifetime of work being taken from her within days of the biggest event of her short career. Put simply, athletes should not be subject to the risk of serious harm occasioned by antidoping authorities’ failure to function effectively at a high level of performance and in a manner designed to protect the integrity of the operation of the Games.’’ Yet putting her back on the ice, when she was doomed to crash, was double jeopardy.
Without medaling in the competition, America secured its biggest victory of the Games. As Russia and China joust for power, on a planet increasingly ripe for a World War, our way of sport and life looked better than it is portrayed on our shores. Even Bach, who has been in Putin’s hip pocket, couldn’t resist criticism of Valieva’s entourage.
“When I afterwards saw how she was received by her closest entourage, with such, what appeared to be a tremendous coldness, it was chilling to see this," Bach said at a news conference. "Rather than giving her comfort, rather than to try to help her, you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance."
Asked by a journalist in a ROC team jacket — WTF? — if he felt responsible for “media chaos’’ and “political propaganda’’ surrounding the “bullying of a 15-year-old,’’ Bach kept firing. Thomas, is that you? Is your conscience being attacked?
“The ones who have administered this drug in her body, these are the ones who are guilty,’’ he said, perhaps feeling guilty himself for letting Putin push through the doping ban.
The Kremlin, needless to say, was not pleased with Bach. “He does not like the toughness of our coaches, but everyone knows that in elite sports, the coach's toughness is key to the students' victories,’’ a Putin spokesman said.
Two weeks ago, I wrote that the Beijing Olympics were the worst idea in the history of sports. With the Games isolated from the city and the world in a “closed loop system,’’ I predicted “a dark, dystopian exercise unlike any that sports has experienced. … If the Olympics were designed as a joyful, quadrennial celebration of global togetherness, the Chinese government has turned the competition into an authoritarian game of high-surveillance Gotcha.’’
As far as we know, no one was banished to a goat farm, never to be heard from again. And the isolationism was effective, with COVID-19 only a factor in the opening few days. Give the Chinese that much. They pulled off the Games, secluded and lonely and inconsequential as they were. Still, here in America, we’re asking: What exactly was the point of this entire exercise? It’s also fair to wonder about the ultimate future of Olympiads in a fractured world. Will Paris spark a revival in 2024? Will Los Angeles return the Games to their prestigious place in 2028?
Or, has the concept outlived its usefulness? Busy with the Super Bowl, bogged by another Asian time-zone difference, I don’t hesitate admitting — as someone who has covered 14 Olympics — that I watched very little of NBC’s coverage. Looking at the worst-ever ratings, I am not alone.
But if the actual events rarely moved us, the geopolitics always do. It’s impossible not to acknowledge the obvious. Russia’s skating debacle — and the manipulation of a child — was a victory for the American Way, whatever that might mean these days.
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Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.