Defending 15-year-old teenage figure-skating sensation Kamila Valieva at the Beijing Winter Games, 69-year-old President Vladimir Putin said what the World Anti-Doping Agency [WADA] found in Valieva’s blood could not account for her brilliant performance, earning her a gold medal on the Russian Olympic Committee Valieva failed a blood test in Dec. 2021 when they found trimetazidine at the Russian national championships. After much controversy, Valieva’s mother said that her maternal grandfather used the same medication for angina or chest pain from a heart condition. Whether admitted to or not, timietazidine is a banned substance for athletes in ice skating or any other sport because it’s a vasodialator that could help performance. Valieva was the first women to complete quad-jumps, something that 22-year-old American gold medalist ice skater Nathan Chen made famous.
Russia was banned in 2019 by WADA for a systemic doping scandal involving the highest and lowest levels of the Russian Olympic Committee. So using banned substances in nothing new to Russian athletes hoping to gain an advantage in competition. How the International Olympic Committee [IOC] allowed Russia to continue competing not as a country but as the “Russian Olympic Committee” is anyone’s guess, a real concession to Russia. “Through her work, she brought the sport to the level of a real form of art,” Putin told Valieva as a Kremlin ceremony for Beijing medallists. Putin, of course, it right that Valieva has that special something that translated her artistry into a gold medal, at least in the team competition. But Putin knows that banned substances are not what create Olympic greatness but they’re banned because they can enhance performance.
Putin brings up the dedication and determination to be an Olympic champion, dismissing Performance Enhancing Drug [PED] use as having anything to do with Valieva’s artistry on the ice. “Such perfection cannot be achieved dishonestly with the help of additional substances, manipulations. We very well know that these additional substances are not needed in figure skating,” Putin said. But without a doubt, Valieva’s used in her routines of so-called quad jumps creating an element of physical demands not seen in generations of past women figure skaters. Putin doesn’t know whether trimetazidine opens up enough blood flow in Valieva’s muscles to set her above the competition. Whether Putin believes it or not, PEDs really do make a difference for athletes pushing the limits in human competition. Whether Valieva could accomplish her feats without PEDs isn’t known.
Valieva was the favorite going into the Beijing Games to win the women’s figure skating gold, based on past competitions. Cleared in Beijing by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Valieva competed in the individual events but the stress finally got to her, finishing in fourth place with a error-prone free-skate performance. Putin raised some interesting points about whether PED-use actually helps or hinders performance. With Valieva testing positive in Dec. 2021 for a banned substance, the pressure from the international press overwhelmed the teenager. When Kamila’s mother, Asu, said that her daughter accidentially ingested her grandfather’s trimetazidine it insulted the intelligence of anyone paying attention. Whether the drug helped Kamila’s performance is anyone’s guess. But banned substances by WADA cannot be explained away under the most unusual circumstances.
Putin complained about Russian and Belarusian Paralympians ejected from the Beijing Paralympics after the Feb. 24 Ukraine invasion. “The suspension of athletes from Russia and Belarus no only directly violated fundamental principles of sport but their must basic human rights were . . .openly, cynically violated,” Putin said at the Kremlin ceremony. Putin condemned the International Swimming Federation [FINA] for suspending Russian gold medallist Evgeny Ryko for nine months because he attended a rally in support of the Ukraine War. Putin called FINA’s decision “completely absurd,” something that paralleled what happened to the world’s No. 2 professional tennis player Dmitry Medvedev, now banned from Wimbledon. Even world No. 1 Novak Djokovic called Medevev’s Wimbledon ban ridiculous. Russia has been punished in all sorts of ways since invading Ukraine.
Russian teenage figure skating sensation got caught in cross hairs of political currents plaguing Russian sports, especially the known systemic use of PEDs. Whether the teenager knew what she was doing was anyone’s guess. It’s possible she knew nothing about what her coaches put in her cereal during her training. When the story broke in Beijing, the public said here we go again with Russian athletes. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility because the entire Russian Olympic Committee was banned by WADA in 2019. When it comes to what PEDs actually do or don’t do, no one knows for sure. PEDs might have helped Valieva spin an additional rotation, go from the triple to a quad. While it’s impossible to say now, Valieva got caught in t he PED trap. When WADA found THC, not a PED, in Sha’Carri Richardson, she was banned from the 2021 Tokyo Summer Games.
