Kamila Valieva looks like she’ll have laid claim to two gold medals by the time she leaves the Beijing Winter Olympics, although whether she ever gets hold of them is still anyone’s guess.
The young Russian figure skater caught up in an Olympic doping row was sitting in first place after Tuesday’s individual short program and will go into Thursday’s free skate as the clear favorite ahead of teammate Anna Shcherbakova.
If the 15-year-old does win the title, or even finishes on the podium, the International Olympic Committee has warned it will call off any medal ceremony until doping allegations against her have been fully examined. Depending on the outcome of that probe, she could be denied any medals from Beijing.
ADVERTISEMENT
Valieva became the first woman to land quad jumps in Olympic competition as she led Russia to gold in the figure skating team event last Monday—before news she had tested positive for banned heart medication in a sample taken at the Russian national championships in St. Petersburg on Dec. 25.
There followed a tussle between Russian team chiefs and the IOC and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on whether the teenager should be allowed to compete again in Beijing. An international arbitration panel ruled in her favor, both because of the unusually long delay in processing her doping sample and because, at 15, she is considered a “protected person” under WADA rules.
After what must have been the longest week of her young life—including a seven-hour doping appeal on Wednesday night that dragged on until 3 a.m.—Valieva appeared nervous as she took to the ice at the Capital Indoor Stadium, stumbling badly on a triple axel early on in her routine before steadying herself. Her emotion was clear to see—she burst into tears while still on the ice and again as she left the rink—but she still managed 82.16 points, seven points ahead of her nearest rival at that point.
Shcherbakova, the 17-year-old world champion who trains with Valieva under the Moscow coach Eteri Tutberidze, looked well placed to overhaul her. But despite producing the standout performance of the night—joyful, precise, and error-free—the judges marked her down on the technical difficulty of her routine. She lay second on 80.20 points.
Team Tutberidze had been hoping for a medal sweep in the individual event, but the third Russian skater, Alexandra Trusova, also missed a triple axel and sits in fourth place behind Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto.
It emerged today that Valieva’s defense in the doping case rests on a claim that she must have accidentally ingested some of her grandfather's heart medication.
The claim was reported by The Dossier Center, a website run by the exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which said Valieva’s lawyer, Anna Kozmenko, had told an anti-doping hearing that the skater’s grandfather takes the drug trimetazidine—which can improve blood flow—for heart issues. Kozmenko said there were various ways it could have got into her body: "For example, [her] grandfather drank something from a glass, saliva got in [and] this glass was somehow later used by the athlete."
Experts consulted by the website dismissed the claim as “unconvincing” but also said it was not clear why the drug would be used for doping in the first place. It does improve blood and oxygen flow to the heart but can cause tremors and a loss of coordination in minors—not ideal for an Olympic figure skater.
