Бог дал, люди взяли: on Kamila Valieva
Сара Лаги
I’ve been planning to write an article about my “experience” with Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian figure skating prodigy who is taking the world by storm– having won the 2022 European and Russian National Championships and, most recently, leading Russia to gold in the team event at the 2022 Olympics, which is currently being held in Beijing. She was the first woman to land a quadruple jump in the history of the games. Valieva, of course, was also expected to win the gold medal in the individual event.
However, it was recently revealed that the 15-year-old tested positive for trimetazidine, a medication banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that is used to treat angina, a painful condition caused by a lack of blood flow to the heart. (Freydkin 2022, Wikipedia 2022) The news left doctors all over the world bewildered. Why would a 15-year-old be prescribed this medication for cardiac problems? What purpose would trimetazidine serve in enhancing a figure skater’s performance? Perhaps most importantly, why would an athlete use this medication dishonestly when its presence in the body is so easy to detect through routine drug testing? The presence of two other substances used to treat cardiac problems, Hypoxen and L-cartinine – both of which are not banned – was also detected in her sample. Used with trimetazidine, these substances can increase endurance by reducing fatigue and increasing blood flow to the muscles. (Maresca 2022)
I can’t speculate too much about these medications specifically; I don’t have the medical or scientific expertise to explain the properties of trimetazidine which led to its prohibition in sports and I, too, don’t understand why Valieva would’ve been given this medication. I do know, though, that I don’t want to describe this situation in a manner which places the blame on a child. Valieva is a 15-year-old girl. She has coaches, doctors, parents, and countless other adults in her life who are responsible for preparing her for competitions, performances, and her voyage to the Beijing Olympics; and, as a young Russian athlete, she has essentially zero agency in both her life and career (something the American audience doesn’t seem to understand). If it turns out that Valieva was given this medication solely to enhance her performance (every day, this reality becomes more clear), the blame – in my eyes – lies with the adults who should’ve trained and prepared her in an honest, ethical way.
In looking at Valieva’s social media, it seems as though – in light of this situation – she still has a lot of fans on her side. Comments like “Золотая наша, держись!” (Our golden one, hold on!) and “Камила! Пусть светлые силы будут на твоей стороне! Мы с тобой.” (Kamila! May the forces of light be on your side! We are with you.) fill her feed. Multiple famous names in figure skating have voiced their personal support for Valieva, including Ilya Averbukh, Evgenia Medvedeva, Evgeniy Plushenko, Maksim Kovtun, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, and Katarina Witt (who also added that the adults responsible for this situation should be permanently banned from the sport– an idea I can definitely get behind). However, as to be expected, she has received a massive amount of hate.
This situation has been difficult for me to grapple with. A minor child being involved in a doping scandal of this magnitude is almost unheard of, and it boggles my mind that human beings are capable of creating these situations. The training methods Kamila’s coach, Eteri Tutberidze, employs have been under scrutiny in the figure skating world for years now. Tutberidze led then 15-year-old Alina Zagitova, who is now unofficially retired, to Olympic gold in 2018. In 2014, Tutberidze was by 15-year-old Yulia Lipnitskaya’s side as she made her Olympic debut in Sochi, winning gold in the team event. Lipnitskaya had to end her sports career in 2017 after a lengthy battle with anorexia nervosa. (NBC Sports 2022) Two-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva, another pupil of Tutberidze’s, announced her retirement from competition this year at the age of 21. She disclosed that a chronic back injury she sustained as a teenager now prevents her from turning her upper body to the left. (Макарена 2021) This will certainly have a long-term impact on her mobility as she ages. It is worth noting that Medvedeva, at the age of 18, competed at the Olympics with both this chronic back injury and a stress fracture in her foot. (Longman 2018) She was apparently given injections to dull the pain.
As time has passed, people have begun to pick up on this pattern; Tutberidze’s students explode onto the scene like fireworks and then quickly fizzle out after a couple of seasons in time for a newer, younger champion to replace them.
Fans often debate and speculate about this. Some want the International Skating Union (ISU) to raise the age limit for senior competitions, while others posit that this cycle is simply the price we must pay in order for the sport to progress– that the decrease in skaters’ ages and career lengths is natural and no formal rule changes would solve the problem. These are important conversations to have, and the discourse has been ongoing for a while now. But doping, until now, never came up during these debates. It is unfathomable that adults could do this to children.
On February 14th, the International Olympic Committee decided to let Valieva compete in the individual event under one condition: if she were to win or medal, there would be no victory ceremony. This, obviously, was a horrible decision and hugely unfair to the other skaters (interestingly, though, two of the other girls who were expected to medal are also Russian and coached by Eteri Tutberidze). Olympic champion Yuna Kim perfectly summed up my reaction to the decision; she wrote on Instagram, “[An] athlete who violates doping cannot compete in the game. This principle must be observed without exception. All players' efforts and dreams are equally precious.” Valieva should not have been allowed to compete. The International Olympic Committee’s decision sets a dangerous precedent.
My heart aches. Valieva has been a prodigy for so long; she is objectively the most naturally gifted skater of her generation. While Russia as a whole is still behind her, I don’t think she realizes that in the rest of the world, her reputation is tarnished. People who don’t even watch figure skating now know her name only because of this scandal, in which her involvement almost certainly wasn’t by choice. She didn’t need trimetazidine to be great.
All of the adults responsible for Kamila’s safety, training, and success have failed and betrayed her. They’ve tarnished her Olympic experience and are putting other Russian athletes in an awful position; every victory they achieve will now be questioned. I agree with Katarina Witt; the people who created this situation should be punished and barred from further involvement in the sport. Although I wish the circumstances were more joyous, I still feel compelled to tell this seemingly insignificant yet deeply meaningful story involving the girl at the center of this scandal.
I've been a fan of figure skating since I was a teenager, and this love of mine is actually what led me to study Russian at William and Mary. Before I got the chance to take formal courses at the university level, I tried, in high school, to teach myself as much as I could. I would often practice by leaving positive comments on photos posted by Russian skaters or messaging them directly with words of encouragement. The vast majority of the time, my comments were never noticed. A lot of skaters on the international level have massive fan bases and simply can’t read and acknowledge every message they receive.
I discovered Kamila Valieva when she was still a junior; her Picasso-inspired Girl on the Ball short program mesmerized me (this program deeply moved even Picasso’s granddaughter, who invited Valieva for a visit– watch the program here!). I began to root for her from afar, and whenever she'd win a competition, I would send her a direct message in Russian expressing my congratulations. I recently revisited these messages and was struck by how horrible my grammar was at the time. There are some sentences that I'm unable to parse today; I genuinely can't figure out what I was trying to express.
Nonetheless, despite having thousands of devoted followers, Kamila always read and liked my messages. She could've easily concluded that they were gibberish and deleted them (I probably would’ve if I were her), but she chose not to. Those small actions meant so much to me at the time.
I was utterly starstruck that this young Russian prodigy acknowledged me, a teenage fan from America with essentially zero command of the Russian language. I knew even then that Valieva was going to do big things. Until recently, I was in awe of the fact that I’d interacted with the future Olympic champion. I took the promise of Kamila’s uncontroversial victory for granted. Now, I feel that I’ve interacted with a girl who should have and could have won fairly.
I really hope that everything works out for Kamila Valieva. As of right now, I can’t say what “everything working out” would entail. Valieva won the short program, but it seems as though the pressure and vitriol got to her by the free skate, where she fell multiple times and ended up, despite winning every competition she competed in this season, not medaling. Some speculate that Valieva purposefully performed poorly in order to ensure that a medal ceremony would be held for her fellow teammates. Indeed, as she sat crying while awaiting her scores, she remarked “now the ceremony won’t be canceled.” There’s essentially no way Kamila will make it to the next Olympics; this was her one and only chance to win an individual gold medal and sadly, it didn’t happen. Anna Shcherbakova and Aleksandra Trusova, who are both coached by Eteri Tutberidze, won gold and silver, respectively. Kaori Sakamoto of Japan won bronze. I think Kamila’s loss may be a blessing in disguise. If she had become the Olympic champion, there would’ve forever been an asterisk next to her name. People would’ve been angry and her triumph would’ve been seen as illegitimate.
I wish we could’ve done something to save Kamila. Such a feeling of powerlessness comes with watching this unfold from afar. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if she’ll be able to keep competing internationally as a result of this scandal; the international outrage may prove to be too powerful. If she is forced into early retirement, the skating world is going to lose a giant. I wish Kamila the best with whatever comes next and hope that the people who did this to her get punished. May her kind, gentle spirit never leave her.
Цитаты:
Freydkin, D. (2022). What is the Olympic Russian skater’s banned drug? Today. https://www.today.com/news/beijing-olympics/russian-skating-drug-rcna15634
Longman, J. (2018). Success of Russia’s Female Figure Skaters Takes a Toll in Injuries and Stress. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/sports/olympics/russia-womens-figure-skating.html
Maresca, T. (2022). Kamila Valieva had three substances in system, reports say. https://www.upi.com/Sports_News/2022/02/16/olympics-kamila-valieva-drug-test-trimetazidine-hypoxen-l-carnitine/7361644987037/
Mayo Clinic. (2022). Angina. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/angina/symptoms-causes/syc-20369373
Wikipedia. (2022a). Figure skating at the 2022 Winter Olympics – Team event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_skating_at_the_2022_Winter_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Team_event
Wikipedia. (2022b). Kamila Valieva. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamila_Valieva
Wikipedia. (2022c). Trimetazidine. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimetazidine
Zaccardi, N. (2022). Yulia Lipnitskaya details retirement, anorexia. NBC Sports. https://olympics.nbcsports.com/2017/09/12/yulia-lipnitskaya-anorexia-figure-skating-retirement/
Макарена. (2021). МИЛОХИН и МЕДВЕДЕВА - про отношения. Поцелуй на Ледниковом периоде. Собчак / 50 вопросов. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bgOWOVahRA