From the get-go, there was never any question there was a substance in the Russian skater Kamila Valieva’s 15-year-old body that shouldn’t have been there.
The issues all along were: 1/ where did that substance, the banned substance trimetazidine, or TMZ, come from, 2/ and what to do about it, since she was 15, and in theory someone who is 15 ought not be treated the same under the rules, anyone’s rules, as someone who is, say, 32.
Put aside everything else – and there’s so much connected to the Valieva matter, which threatened to all but eclipse everything that wasn’t Valieva at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games – and those two keys make up the core of Monday’s Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport judgment, which said those rules mean Valieva deserves to be treated like a grown-up.
So, it said, she got what she deserves, the usual: a four-year ban.
For, let’s note, a first offense.
Frozen in time: the iconic image of Kamila Valieva, then 15, at the Beijing Games // Getty Images
The politics and intricacies of this are ferocious. If you want to scratch a Cold War-style itch and say Russia bad, United States good because the Americans will now move up in the Beijing medal standings, feel free to read all that elsewhere. After 25 years of doing this, I am sanguine enough to know everyone cheats – even, especially, Americans. See the Sydney 2000 4x400 U.S. relay team in track and field – a saga that took eight years to resolve. Or Marion Jones – seven years to come to conclusion. Or Lance Armstrong – once more, seven years to come clean.
Two years-ish here from start to finish? Please.
The hypocrisies, double standards and inconsistencies are everywhere. The U.S. leagues aren’t in the world anti-doping system. NBA standout Tristan Thompson (hello, morally sanctimonious Canadian friends), now 32, the on-again, off-again Khloé Kardashian beau, just got tagged for a synthetic testosterone-like substance. Under NBA rules, he was suspended without pay for 25 games. If it was the World Anti-Doping Association Code? Four years, just like Valieva, unless he could prove good reason. Where was the global outcry? The New York Post’s Page Six revealed Khloé is “staying strong.” (By going to the gym.)
So, what to do about Kamila Valieva?
A recap:
She tested positive on Christmas Day 2021 for TMZ. The Stockholm lab didn’t report it until we were all in Beijing. By then, she had already skated in the team competition. Because she was 15, her name shouldn’t have become public. It did. Furor ensued. Under the glare of crushing worldwide attention, she crumbled and finished fourth, out of the medals, in the women’s individual event. You wouldn’t have wished what happened to her that night on anyone.
TMZ is a heart medicine. It’s used to treat angina, a chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to your heart.
Why would that be in a 15-year-old’s system?
It’s well known – ask Sun Yang, the Chinese swimmer, winner of, among other medals, the men’s 1500 meters at the London 2012 Games – that TMZ has a different application at high-level athletics. It can make your heart work more efficiently. Let’s say you want to swim the longest distance in the Olympic pool. Or skate for four minutes, executing several quadruple jumps.
Maybe it enters into someone’s mind that TMZ could be an aid? Perhaps?
For the record: in 2014, Sun Yang got three months off for TMZ. Then they changed the rules, moving TMZ to a different category. Lots about the two matters: different. Still, hypocrisies, double standards, three months in 2014 for a then-22-year-old, four years in 2024 for a 15-year-old.
It’s beyond well-known the Russians have consistently been on the wrong side of the line when it comes to substances. To reiterate: so have many teams and individuals, including your red, white and blue American stars. In this instance, though, absolutely we are talking Russians.
The primary issue in the Valieva case is proving source.
That is:
Where did the TMZ come from?
Suggestion from Russia: Kamila’s grandfather.
Which is more credible, hypothetically? 1/ Grandpa had TMZ and Kamila someway somehow ingested enough that the lab could test for it or 2/ just saying here, the Russians have a system in which some number of their athletes, maybe even outstanding figure skaters who go for four-plus minutes and jump a lot and have to be strong and tough, are given TMZ because, you know, the whole point of doping is that it works and TMZ does what it is supposed to do?
Believe what you will.
It’s not difficult to imagine a situation in which Team Valieva simply provided nothing, literally nothing, to CAS, nothing from grandpa, a doctor, a pharmacy, nothing. Why? On the grounds that either 1/ they didn’t believe CAS had jurisdiction, meaning it shouldn’t have been hearing the case in the first place, or 2/ she was 15, a minor, and didn’t have to, because they believed the rules said that at 15 she was a “protected person” and thus to be treated differently.
The underlying CAS ruling was not made public Monday. Only a news release. It may never be released. Why? Presumably because she was 15.
In a case that has shone the brightest light imaginable on CAS, how does that inspire public confidence?
Also: CAS issued its statement at 3 p.m. Swiss time. The IOC traditionally moves to its own rhythms; news deadlines are not its primary concern and, indeed, key IOC staff is in Korea, at the Winter Youth Games; yet 91 minutes later, at 4:31 p.m. in Lausanne, a story on the IOC website was right there with details about the CAS ruling and how Valieva had gotten four full years. So, like, weird.
At any rate, and this is where things get super-freaky, it’s not implausible the Russians simply decided to sacrifice Valieva.
Valieva has a super-passionate and -loyal fan base. Since Beijing, I have consistently been implored, especially via direct messages on Instagram, some in English, many in Russian, to write columns “supporting” Valieva. As if anything I might write might influence CAS. Note to all: appreciate the reach-out but not the way it works.
Again, though, back to source.
Where did the TMZ come from? A 15-year-old girl is supposed to be 1/ knowledgeable about the effects of 2/ an angina drug for 3/ sports purposes and 4/ procuring it herself when 5/ in Russia you have to be 18 to get a driver’s license (16 for motorcycles)?
This belies credibility.
To win Olympic gold means executing those many quads. To do that in recent years means being younger than older, “older” being exquisitely relative.
Valieva’s four-year ban will expire shortly before the 2026 Winter Games. But by then she may well be by at or past her Olympic sell-by date, brutal as that may seem.
In two months, on April 26, Valieva turns 18. Math: 19 next year, 20 just two months after the Games in Italy in 2026.
As Associated Press noted in its story Monday, younger skaters from the same group under Eteri Tutberidze have already beaten Valieva at the Russian nationals.
At the end of the free skate in Beijing // Getty Images
Moments later, in kiss-and-cry with coach Eteri Tutberidze, left, and chreographer Daniil Gleikhengauz // Getty Images
The Russians can have a different, a very different, mindset that many of us in the West. Recall that on the night Valieva crumbled, when she came off the ice, Tutberidze asked, “Why did you stop fighting?”
The next day, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, was moved to say he had been “very, very disturbed” to see the “tremendous coldness” of Valieva’s entourage.
Is that “tremendous coldness” at play here now as well?
“The ones who have administered this drug in her body,” Bach said in Beijing, “these are the ones who are guilty.”
In the nearly two years since, there has been no indication Tutberidze – or for that matter, anyone in the Valieva entourage – is facing any action
The Americans may now go on and on about fairness and clean sport and blah blah. That’s noise. Honestly, a great deal of it is echo chamber nonsense.
The signal is that a 15-year-old girl, now 17, turning 18, is getting a four-year spanking. For a first offense. What adult in this figurative room is being sanctioned for anything? And why not?