Russian Figure Skater tests positive for drugs - delays ceremony for team medals

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aliona22 said:
Kamila didn’t cripple the presumptive winner! The title will go to Anna if Kamila is suspended. The ISU awarded medals to the skaters who moved up when Bazarova/Larionov were retroactively disqualified for a doping violation. No reason not to do the same thing here.
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Did Bazarova/ Larionov virtually hijack the Olympics like Valieva did?
 
carriecmu0503 said:
Did Bazarova/ Larionov virtually hijack the Olympics like Valieva did?
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The ISU allowed one more woman to get through to the LP in case Valieva's result was later annulled. I wouldn't say she hijacked the Olympics knowing that the ISU set up accordingly if something were to happen. And if another Russian woman would've replaced her, I'm sure there would be a whole gallery of fans screaming unfair anyways. I'm not even sure that the newer rules allow for someone to WD/be DQ after the team event and then be replaced with another entry from the same country.

But for a parallel- Berezhnaya (and Sikharulidze) had a positive drug test in between 2000 Europeans and Worlds, their gold medal result from Euros was removed and everyone else was moved up a spot, and they were DQ from Worlds during the ban. This is not really different from that case, except that A) Valieva's positive drug supposedly carries a lesser sentence and B) Valieva was underage.

Moreover, I suspect if Valieva is found guilty and the sentence she receives only covers Europeans in terms of ISU events, the ISU would gladly remove her result and move a non-Russian (Hendrickx) up to the podium.
 
tony said:
Moreover, I suspect if Valieva is found guilty and the sentence she receives only covers Europeans in terms of ISU events, the ISU would gladly remove her result and move a non-Russian (Hendrickx) up to the podium.
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So long as they also top up Hendrickx's prize money to the bronze medallist's rate at the same time as they give her the title and pot-metal - and the same for the new fourth, fifth and sixth place-winners.
 
aliona22 said:
Kamila didn’t cripple the presumptive winner! The title will go to Anna if Kamila is suspended. The ISU awarded medals to the skaters who moved up when Bazarova/Larionov were retroactively disqualified for a doping violation. No reason not to do the same thing here.
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No, but Berezhnaya/Sikharulidze did at the Europeans in 2000. The ranks moved up, Petrova/Tikhonov moved from 2nd to champions
 
tony said:
The ISU allowed one more woman to get through to the LP in case Valieva's result was later annulled. I wouldn't say she hijacked the Olympics knowing that the ISU set up accordingly if something were to happen.
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She may not have hijacked the Olympics, but the situation did. The women (and probably most if not all of the athletes) were being asked about the doping scandal instead of the focus being on them and the success of reaching what for most is a pinnacle competition of their career that they’ve been working at minimum 4 years for and at most their whole lives. Allowing one more woman to compete was like putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. It created a cloud over the whole competition for those athletes.
 
carriecmu0503 said:
I would not be surprised if they leave that European title blank as a reminder of what happened, a la the 1994 US ladies title. When Harding was stripped, the title was not awarded to Kwan.
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I wouldn't be surprised if Valieva retains her national title no matter what. But other people decide about the European Championship, and they obviously will not leave everything as it is.
 
I'm watching to see how RUSADA present their conclusions. Will it be an honest appraisal of what happened with an appropriate, transparent ruling? If so, that's a huge step forward and I'd be right in line to congratulate them! However...yeah. Who gets tossed under the bus on this will speak volumes about how they intend to move forward.

Russia has state-sponsored doping where authorities are actively involved in suppressing positive tests. Other countries, including Canada and the US, have non-sponsored doping, where the government is not involved but various training centres, coaching teams, and sporting authorities are often part of the team assisting athletes in accessing and using PEDs.

College/University level athletes are given scary lists of all the banned substances they can be tested for. I had a small book showing everything I needed to avoid, including cold medications. There was still doping at the university level in my sport and liberal use of TUEs. People are sneaky and the drive to win is unusually high among elite athletes aspiring to professional careers or Olympic glory along with the potential money, scholarships, or fame attached.

Russia needs to be taken to task for its doping, but let's not pretend everyone else is squeaky clean. We're not. Our problems are at grassroots and elite training levels rather than national government ones but our problems are just as real. Sport in general has a doping problem, one that's not easy to fix. For example, the Canadian government isn't running performance enhancement research but there's certainly national pride wrapped up in our athletes winning medals and championships. It's very easy for everyone to look the other way, never questioning suspicious results while pointing fingers at others. Just look at how many fans cry about how favourite athletes are "harassed" by the "bloodsuckers" who demand out-of-competition tests. It's the same everywhere.
 
carriecmu0503 said:
I would not be surprised if they leave that European title blank as a reminder of what happened, a la the 1994 US ladies title. When Harding was stripped, the title was not awarded to Kwan.
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I think they'd happily give it to Shcherbakova, giving her the kind of 'grand slam' of titles. I'm too lazy to go back and look, but when is the last time that the reigning World champion became the next year's Euros and Olympic champion?
 
screech said:
I think they'd happily give it to Shcherbakova, giving her the kind of 'grand slam' of titles. I'm too lazy to go back and look, but when is the last time that the reigning World champion became the next year's Euros and Olympic champion?
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Katarina Witt 1988? Volosozhar/Trankov 2014? In men it's a bit harder - the USA/CAN/JPN men don't do the Euros:)
At any rate, as Scherbakova never won the GPF she doesn't get the grand slam (that one still belongs to Zagitova)
 
TAHbKA said:
Katarina Witt 1988? Volosozhar/Trankov 2014? In men it's a bit harder - the USA/CAN/JPN men don't do the Euros:)
At any rate, as Scherbakova never won the GPF she doesn't get the grand slam (that one still belongs to Zagitova)
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You're right about Witt. For some reason I thought Debi was the reigning world champ, but that was the previous year. But still - more than 30 years!
And I decided to google figure skating grand slams. It's an interesting read! Grand Slam (GPF, Euros/4CC, Worlds), Golden Slam (Grand Slam plus OGM), Career Grand Slam (the 3 major titles outside a single season). The list even includes the 'Super Slam' which is skaters who won both major junior titles (JGPF and Junior Worlds), as well as getting a 'Golden Slam'.

To bring this back to Valieva - she has such talent that she could easily have been a 'Super Slam' in her career.
 
Even aside from the elements themselves - things like her extension (which made her legs look about 72 feet long) were exquisite. The doping may have allowed her to train longer, making it easier to achieve the things she did, but she would not have been able to achieve them at all if she didn't have the capability.
 
TAHbKA said:
Valieva is the most amazing female skater I have ever seen and we were all robbed from seeing what else could that girl do throughout her career.
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This is one of the things that make me saddest about this. I've no doubt she would have been very successful even without Grandpa's juice. She is just so, so talented, but the people in charge of her training didn't find that to be enough I guess. It's very sad.
 
Rukia said:
This is one of the things that make me saddest about this. I've no doubt she would have been very successful even without Grandpa's juice. She is just so, so talented, but the people in charge of her training didn't find that to be enough I guess. It's very sad.
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This is how I feel. She is exquisite, but they couldn't trust in her talent to deliver. Probably the others in the group as well, as no other group had so many quads coming out of a program.
 
skatfan said:
This is how I feel. She is exquisite, but they couldn't trust in her talent to deliver. Probably the others in the group as well, as no other group had so many quads coming out of a program.
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This brings me back to the argument that if one person in the group is doping, they all are. I think it depends.

Of course, in the US, it's just not that organized. Coaches teach at multiple rinks, and skaters have multiple coaches, sometimes as part of a loose coalition of coaches in the area but sometimes not. They belong to clubs, but so do hundreds of skaters and clubs don't control training.

But in a place like Russia, there are training centers where everything is controlled by the people running the center. In those cases, you can bet that it's not just the athlete(s) that got caught. But that doesn't mean it's everyone, either.

(This is just skating. In other sports in the US, there are training centers too and we have found that some of them are cheating with all or most of their athletes just like we suspect is going on at Sambo-70. i.e., the Nike Oregon Project)
 
Lara111 said:
Well, skating is a very different sport. It does require talent and not just athletism.
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all sports require talent.

of course Valieva was insanely talented.

But if she would have achieved what she did without doping? I don't think so. There is a reason why so many people in the tour de France were doped - and there is a reason why in the last 20 posts alone we heard about various Russian skaters who were banned for doping at this or that point.
Of course doping gives a huge advantage and Valieva benefited by it. How much - we will never know.
 
How many times have we joked about Russian men running out of gas in their long programs. Are Kolyada, Aliev, Ignatov et al talented? Undoubtedly. Would they do better with more stamina? Of course. It may be that the secret ingredient doesn’t work as well on men as on pre-pubescent girls. But it’s certain that anything that expands stamina will heighten what talent can achieve.
 
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