'Dirty Cheaters.' Olympians Let Loose on Kamila Valieva and the Russian Doping Controversy at the Be
Former Olympic stars are up in arms over the controversial ruling allowing Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva to continue to compete in the Beijing Olympics—but prevent her or any other athletes from receiving medals if Valieva places in the top three. The 15-year-old Valieva had been the gold medal favorite in the women’s event, which begins Tuesday Feb. 15, after she successfully appealed her suspension for testing positive for a banned substance.
Valieva tested positive for a heart medication, trimetazidine, normally prescribed to patients with angina to improve blood flow. Athletes have been known to use the drug to help increase circulation and endurance, which allows them to train longer, and the drug is on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list. Valieva’s positive sample came from Dec. 25, at the Russian national championships, which is before Olympic doping regulations took effect on Jan. 27. In Beijing, Russian athletes are competing as the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), and not under their country’s flag, because the country is serving a multi-year ban for a state sponsored doping system that was exposed following the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.
“They shouldn’t be here at the Olympic Games,” Rippon says of the Russian team’s repeated doping violations. “They’re clowns.”
Because Valieva is a minor, anti-doping authorities consider her a “protected person,” meaning that punishments are generally lighter and an investigation into the violation will be focused more on the adults surrounding her on the assumption that she may not have been aware of the banned substance. “What this says is that the team around her are child abusers,” says Rippon, who now coaches American skater Mariah Bell. “The only thing they care about is performance, and not the health and well being of their athletes. They are a factory that pumps out children who can compete, up to a certain point. It doesn’t feel like the coaches involved in the ladies’ program are coaches at all, but dog trainers; they’re running a circus.”
The repeated doping violations from Russian athletes have been a plague on the Olympic movement and its professed to commitment to clean competition and a level playing field. “I feel sick to my stomach. What I’m feeling is my whole dedication to my sport, to my community and to my country — I’m questioning it all,” says retired Canadian skater Scott Moir, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in ice dance. “I’m questioning why I walked into schools for the past 12 years of my life and told kids what pride I took in being an Olympian and what that means, and what power sports has in bringing the world together, for fair play and the Olympic morals that we all believe in.”
https://time.com/6148004/kamila-valieva-doping-decision-olympians-reactions/
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