Figure skating is no stranger to scandal. Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva's positive drug test is just the latest. USA TODAY Sports columnist Christine Brennan describes what figure skating needs to do to recover from this.
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Personally, for myself… I’m done watching. Too much drama. Too little integrity. It’s no longer about honor and skill. It about politically corrupt power.
Let this be a learning experience to all athletes… if your coach care about the metal more then you..if you can’t get the metal ,they don’t care about you after that point… you not a athlete…you were always a tool they used to get the metal..they can’t climb a broke ladder to get to the next level… you are the ladder..
This has happened like 100 times. Some people just don’t learn.
Maybe because Russia is partly Asia in culture and Asia does have a reputation for strict parents, strict coaches, and really hard intense training, schooling etc.
@French Potato true.. and failure is the biggest disappointment… but public shaming was totally unacceptable…
@mv4463 I totally agree with the public shaming. The media were acting like vultures over a 15 year old. The people were very unforgiving.
I thought they were a “team”?
Hopefully not the flaka
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WHY are the women to dress so IMMODESTILY? Not the men??
WHy HOLlywood too??
Why cheerleaders, the same? Gymnastics?
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Well UK got caught up but let’s all concentrate on Russia only. 🙄
wait what did the United Kingdom do?
It’s surprising how everyone sees Valieva’s young age as important, but misses out on what really matters.
The important point is that she is not old enough to handle drugs alone. In other words, it was done systematically by her coaches or their seniors.
Even the most naive fool wouldn’t believe her coaches could have only drugged Valieva alone.
It appears that Valieva deliberately ruined her performance to award medals to other Russian players.
Because the medal would have been forfeited and the awards ceremony would have been cancelled, if Valieva had made it to the podium.
And that would have made it difficult for other Russian girls to brag about winning medals. Therefore, medals simply went to undetected doping girls.
In addition, Valieva also showed a terrifying ability to take fourth place despite falling three times and ruining her performance.
Female figure skating has reached the worst point where no matter how much Russian skaters ruin the game, the skaters from other countries can never win, no matter how good they are.
The nightmare of the Salt Lake City Olympics, in which Russia bribed the judges and plunged the figure skating into hell, is being revived and continued since Sochi.
It is a well-known fact around the world that Russia improves its athletes through doping at the national level.
So Valieva’s case is clear evidence that Russia is still doing it.
And it turns out that international sports organizations like CAS are too corrupt to take any action to punish or prevent such misdeeds.
Moreover, the media glorified Valieva as a victim rather than a conspirator or beneficiary.
So the media turned away from clean athletes like Rika Kihira, who were the real victims.
Rika Kihira suffered an injury while practicing quad jumps to compete against Russian athletes who used the power of drugs to do quads, and had no choice but to abandon the Olympics.
Many clean athletes have had to get injured or go through a slump for similar reasons.
Nevertheless, media focused only on Valieva’s psychological state or her return in next Olympics.
In such a situation, how can the spirit of sports and justice be restored?
Therefore, the Valieva case should not be treated as a matter of personal corruption or protection of minors.
At the very least, the corrupt powers of Russia that have taken over the figure skating world must be wiped out.
Furthermore, the focus should be on the reform of the corrupt international sports organizations and the practical punishment of countries that do not stop the evil acts of nationally practicing doping and promoting biased judgments.
@hema syutam Russian girls are training very professionally from very young age. Other figurskaters also go to school when they are kids. There are always athletes who are willing to work harder than the others. And that makes you the best. In Russia figureskating is very important and popular sport and there are lot of girls to choose from.
And for fact there have been quad jumpers in other countries as well, but in Russia you would not make it to the top without the quad.
As for your comment – you just seem to be jelaous. It is always easier to blame others that they are cheating when you are too lazy but don’t want to admit it.
@hema syutam sorry, but your Rika hurt herself by herself. Wrong trainingmethods or whatever. She is not the first figureskater who got insured. There are girls in Russia too who get insured. They just take the next one. Big country. It is cruel competition, but it is nit Valieva’s fault. I would not play a judge here, because her case has not been finished yet. So it is clear jelaousy that you are spreading. Because Kamila is the best and she doesn’t need any doping. It doesn’t give you the qualities she has. She is pure talent.
@mimmi31 Are you arguing that athletes from other countries do not train harder than Russian girls?
So, why did Russian girls never win a gold medal in the women’s singles Olympic figure skating before Sochi?
Could it be that they didn’t train harder than the Russian girls now?
I hope you don’t insult good and clean people to hide the truth.
Professionally does not mean honest and clean. Especially when it comes to the Russian training system.
It has been revealed through various photos and videos that the bodies of Russian girls have the muscularity that mature bodybuilders can only achieve.
No one can believes that it is possible with out drugs.
Russia proved that it had already led the widespread use of drugs at the national level to the point of being bannde from the Olympics
And Russia is also notorious for biased judgments at the Salt Lake and Sochi Olympics.
With clear precedents like this, do you think it’s possible to convince people around the world to think that it’s normal for only Russian girls to quad jump and win gold medals?
People around the world aren’t as accustomed to brainwashing as Russians are, so they’re just trying to think rationally.
@mimmi31 Instead of resorting to the vile methods of building and strengthening her body with drugs, like Russian athletes do, Rika was only injured while training honestly.
If the training method is the problem, why aren’t there currently any athletes who can jump quad jumps except in Russia?
Please do not make absurd claims that Russia has developed a special training method.
Russia is a country that never had an Olympic gold medal in women’s singles before Sochi’s dirty medal.
In other words, other than drugs, Russia has never been ahead of any other country in the tradition or systematic education of women’s figure skating.
Please don’t insult the clean players who are the real victims to glorify the Russian girls who get ridiculously high points for quads jump that dosen’t fill revolution properly with strengthed bodies by doping and bias judgements
@mimmi31 Drugs can enhance your heart performances. During skating, especially performing long program, it helps you have more stamina to skate more powerful and longer which helps esp jumps.
I think if you really care about Kamila which I do. I worry if she is abused to take those drug to perform even tho she is injured and performing over her physical limitation.
I surprise how people are oh it is just a doping. It is okay. Not okay. What is the rule? So simple. So I dont know why you are okay with Kamila taking drugs. She needs to be protected by adults…but they abused her. If you are real fan, taking gold with doping scandal will hurt Kamila more. Pls think logical
Her coaches are the best in the world and she also is the best looking forward to seeing her at worlds, the media was quite disgusting in this whole thing everything was so obviously politically motivated
@Starla Baucum there is no proof they gave her anything and the reason Anna was left at the end is because Sasha was throwing a fit because she didn’t win and Kamila was having a meltdown you forget the 3 top athletes are theirs also it’s Kamila not Kamala
She won’t be at worlds.
Girl there are many videos covering Eteri’s abusive coaching..Including she grab one of skaters hair and start spinning, pulling her hair
@헤이즈ㄹ link please
They doped minor CHILDREN… you want your child taking that crap? They’re lucky nothing happened to them considering they’re all so frail looking & what are the health consequences when they get older? Politically motivated? The only thing political about this is Russia continually cheating to win gold
If they really want to fix the problem, they need to ban children from the Olympics. 18 years or older should be the requirement. Get these kids out of adult games and go develop a childrens olympics for them. This was supposed to be the Women’s figure skating event…..they’ve turned it into a childrens quad jumping contest….ridiculous! Get these underage, protected status kids out of the Olympics.
Fortunately Kamila will get far more out of this than she would have if things had proceeded correctly and had her gold medal. Modern mentality and sentimentality finds her the perfect subject and magnet for care and if she can look forward she will have all the support she needs, after all this media outrage. She was mistreated by the decision of IOC who robbed her of her hard work, and by the abusive training from the Russians, hopefully it turns out for the best as she is in the spotlight far more than if this hadn’t happened.
Don’t like that Thomas Bach guy, he should step down from IOC. He basically created that situation.
He just tried to damage conteol by now saying how “chilling” he finds those coaches
He is much worse than two former IOC presidents were combined.
they made this girl lose ! because she has it all and knew they would lose all the medals of she took the gold so they probably told her to throw the performance
Nobody made her loose. She decided that her fellow skaters deserve the medal ceremony. Big heart person
I like seeing scandals
I don’t think her coach’s reaction after she finished skating was cold or cruel. My Asian parents would’ve said the same thing to me. It’s just a cultural difference.
I agree wit you. In my culture is the same. Kids are very mature
So sorry – how very sad for you.
I don’t think the coache’s reaction was cold. They hugged her in the kiss and cry. What else should they have done?
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The over arching issue here is the IOC taking charge of every aspect of drug testing. How is it that a test taken on December 25 does not produce results in days but rather 6 weeks later from a Swedish lab? Incomprehensible. If the lab takes 6 weeks to produce a test result how could anyone confidently rely on the fact that it was Kamila Valieva’s sample to begin with? The IOC must take over the entire testing process or risk undermining the Olympics as nothing more than cheater countries allowed to participate without penalty. The Russian Federation is notoriuos and frankly ought to be permanently banned.
And brow beating the 15 year old Kamila by coaches, doctors and the Russian Olympic Federation is disgusting. Just ban Russisns ftom the Olympics. Period.
I hope Kamila Valieva — who is a prodigy — can relocate out of Russia and skate her best skates freely without the toxic abuse from “adults” with their own nefarious agendas. I wonder how these “coaches” are paid or monetarily incentivized to “coach” children into abusive training regimes for the Olympics. That might be an interesting investigation!
The test taken on the 25th of December was deliberately delayed until the right momen in order to upset the winning Russian skater. It is obvious. Anyway, the IOC and Richard Bach was supposed to keep the test result secret because Valieva is protected from doping punishment due to her young age. Again, what they did was completely the opposite.
As for the test itself, the micro dose of doping was most likely caused by cross contamination. Even CAS admits it.
This one says “” coaches have to be examined and have to be disciplined”, implying their guilt, I mean you cannot discipline someone before you find them guilty, this western media is horrendous.
Another insightful comment from a fake person. Brennan was among those who started all this drama. Now she cares about Valieva… She did everything to destroy her. It was done for Valieva not to win 2 gold medals and for Russians not to sweep the podium. The long-term objective to destroy Tuberidze and to turn women’s competition to “ice show” again with average skaters. IOC did not want her to skate. The president said so. They probably did not want her to skate at OG from the very beginning hoping that Russia will send Tuktamysheva for her “life achievement award” like other countries do. That’s why the positive test for a questionable amount of substance was realized so unexpectedly right after the team event was over. IOC needed to stop Valieva and they did. Nobody talked about her coaches much then. Everyone was attacking 15 years old who was guilty for being the best skater ever. Now we hear fake sympathies that her coaches do not treat her well. None of your business. It is ROC, Valieva’s and Valieva’s parents’ business to decide about her coaches. Figure skating need to recover from toxic people like Brennan.