From Olympic golden child to derided drug-cheat, Kamila Valieva falls once more at free skate

Opinion

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This article was published 16/02/2022 (1042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEIJING A disgusted flip-off with her hand, as if to say: The hell with it.

Or maybe, goodbye to all that.

Because, if history is any indicator, this might have been the last we saw of Kamila Valieva. By the time Cortina 2026 rolls ‘round, she will be 19 – long in the tooth for a Russian female figure skater, even one widely considered the greatest ever.

Even if she shone brilliantly for just a brief moment and crumbled under the glare of the Olympics, derided as a drug-cheat who got away with perfidy.

Doubtless there will be more where this traumatized teenager came from.

They like them absurdly young, the poltroons of Russian figure skating. Malleable, unwitting and obediently game to train and train and train the most difficult jumps imaginable, which hardly anyone else has commanded of females. And when the scarcely pubescent girls break down, their bodies destroyed by quad-this and quad-that, by triple axels – three and a half rotations without the take-off boost of a toe pick, upthrust from a blade edge all in the leg muscles and spinning torso – they’re discarded.

Anna Shcherbakova, the new Olympic champion and reigning world champion, had a pair of quads in her free skate program Thursday night, and she’s the quad-lite girl from Russia’s “Quad Squad.” Teammate Alexandra Trusova, the other 17-year-old — silver medallist (she actually won the free skate) — jammed her long routine with five quads – flip, Salchow, toe, lutz and lutz again, three in a row to start the program, one of them downgraded for a step-out, two in combination, the quad lutz-triple toe hardest combo from any figure skater at these Games, male or female, including men’s champion Nathan Chen.

A magnificent one-two podium punch for Russia, Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto claiming bronze – arguably the most elegant and polished of all the final flight skaters, with tremendous speed coming out of her jumps, precision in every moment, deep knees, seamless, lovely artistic interpretation, not a triple axel in sight, nary a quad.

But no medal for Valieva, the prodigy, the golden child, the supernova.

Instead, a deep wince, misery written all over her young face, shame probably, and an eruption of sobs as her disastrous program ended, strewn with errors, jittery from start to finish, probably the longest four minutes and 20 seconds of the girl’s life.

Two hard falls, a hand down, under-rotated jumps, over-rotated jumps, a mutant back-end combination toe dryly described on the judges’ detailed score as “invalid element,” deductions on both her quads, triple axel downgraded.

For Valieva, just a mess.

The audience at the Capital Indoor Stadium, such as it was, could feel her pain throughout, cheering at every element accomplished, urging her on when she fell.

Fifth in the free skate and first from Tuesday’s short program couldn’t save Valieva from ignominy – fourth overall, out of the medals, frozen in horror in the kiss ‘n’ cry as her score flashed. But she would have known, seen the downfall coming as her “Bolero’’ program staggered from misstep to misstep, all the distress of the past week culminating in a fiasco – by her standards – never before experienced.

That’s what young Valieva will take from these Games – the taste of ashes.

No doubt there will be gloating in many parts of the figure skating universe today – particularly an exceedingly hostile American media that just pounded away at the girl, without any clarity yet on how she came to have failed a drug test administered on Christmas Day at Russian nationals, the result (from a Swedish lab) not registered until Feb. 7, after Valieva had already lead the Russian Olympic Committee to triumph in the team event, nailing a brace of quads.

It’s a thin gruel of schadenfreude, though.

That gold medal is in limbo – U.S. sitting silver, pending, Japan bronze — as sports authorities investigate the case, which could take months to resolve. In the interim, an expedited hearing before the Court of Arbitration for Sport had green-lit Valieva’s participation in the women’s singles competition, a decision that triggered caterwauling from all corners.

Understandable, the dismay. Someone known to have tested positive for a banned drug, a medication to treat angina designated a stimulant by the World Anti-Doping Agency – it could increase endurance, which would help in relentless training sessions – had been allowed to go ahead and compete, because the CAS, highest legal body in global sports, decided “irreparable harm’’ might come to Valieva if her inclusion was taken away.

And maybe there was never a right answer, only a less wrong one. The CAS swung and missed.

As Valieva wept afterwards, her teammate Shcherbakova looked angry, though it’s hard to say for sure, or about what, except that perhaps it was tainting her moment. Most of the skaters have given the Valieva scandal a wide berth, though Shcherbakova did offer a resounding defence at the press conference after the short program competition of her embattled coach Eteri Tutberidze, under the microscope for her merciless drilling of her charges – and part of the “entourage’’ around Valieva being investigated, with suspicion the girl had been given banned drugs without understanding what she was taking.

All three of the Russian Olympic girls are from Tutberidze’s stable.

One wonders where women’s skating is headed, with this quad revolution, which men’s skating went through some years ago. Maybe it will simply be expected for females to take the four-plunge, completely changing the landscape of the sport, which was the criticism when men got all quad-crazy.

“We’re already kind of at that point,’’ mused Madeline Schizas, Canada’s only entry in the women’s singles competition, after coming off the ice, not much pleased with her performance, doubling down a couple of triples, under-rotating a triple flip, faltering on a tag-on double toe, earning a score of 115.03 for the free, 175.56 combined, and thirteenth place.

“If you look at this event, a lot of people are doing triple axels, a lot of people are doing quad jumps.’’

Indeed, Schizas, who’s just turned 19, has been working on an axel for the past year and thought she almost had it last summer, but set the trick aside for a while.

“I didn’t think the risk was worth it to get to the Olympics for Canada. I did not need to do it. But I’m looking forward to working on that. And becoming the first Canadian woman to land one.’’

The only saving grace in the final outcome of the women’s competition is that, without a podium for Valieva, there’s no asterisk – as had been provisionally announced by the IOC – and no hold-back on these medals, pending.

Two Russians beaming, one Russian weeping.

It’s the broken girl we’ll remember.

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno