Kamila Valieva: Anti-doping Case and Follow-ups

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

The Russian team hasn't been allowed to compete under their own flag for how many Olympics now? Is that not due to widespread doping? They're lucky they even get to compete. But they're still doping, and then they get their medals taken away. Lesson apparently not learned. Let's not act too surprised. Kamila is being used here, and yes, it sucks for her. But as someone stated earlier in this thread, if you skate as a senior then you follow the "senior" rules. Not sure why the Russian powers-that-be are not going after her coaches and skating school, something that should have been targeted from day one. The scoring issue for the bronze is a mess for sure...lets just award the gold and silver medals, and mail out the bronze when resolved, since the Russian team probably couldn't travel out of their country anyways due to other "political issues."

The Russian team wouldn't show up to a ceremony receive a bronze, whereas the Canadians would be happy to.

And if the Russians did show up, they'd probably pull a Surya during the medal ceremony.

 

[snowed]

Please, the excuses have to end.

The sample was received by the lab December 27th. The Olympics weren't until February 6th. Why would they have marked it as a high priority. High priority is for when you need something tested immediately upon receipt. Why would they need it tested December 28th? The result was supposed to have been returned and updated in ADAMS no later than January 16th. This is why skaters had resorted to cornering WADA officials at Europeans demanding their results, then they still dragged their feet and took another two weeks to return the result.

I guess COVID and all the delays cleared up on February 8th and they were able to update ADAMS for Valieva.

Valieva for a trace amount of something in her system, which she probably still has no idea how it got there, is paying the heaviest price for the smallest of errors. She's taking responsibility and she's a child.

This lab and WADA, and never taken responsibility for something so simple as returning a result within 43 days instead of 45. Just blame everything and everyone else.

This should be taken in to account when distributing the team medals and why Valieva should be stripped but the rest of the team keep the gold.

If we are playing the blaming game, why no go even further, to the root of it? Why wasn't Valieva test processed to a lab closer and had to be sent out of the country? Because the all Russian labs lost the accreditation to process the Russian athletes tests because of systemic doping.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

I'm curious why the tap water defense wasn't used for Valieva that Cox had successfully used. The "source of the drug" has been a credibility problem (IMO) of Valieva's defense since the emergency hearing - originally it being that she drank after her grandfather and managed to ingest pill fragments, then it seems that they settled on as someone with a food allergy would say "cross contamination" in the kitchen.

So I'm hearing grandpa's tap water, I'm hearing cake... what's the one they're going with as of late?

 

[Andrina]

Dear Skating91,

Let me summarise a few points so that there is no need to flood this thread by repeating the same things over and over.

1) Replacing Kamila with a 2nd, 3d or even 15th number of the Russian Nationals DID NOT guarantee Russian victory in the team event - none knows how those girls would have skated.

2) Although Kamila is not 18 y.o., she was competing with adults. So, bringing an argument that she's only a child is from a range of double standards.

3) Simply scratching Kamila's 10 points without redistributing them is meaningless. In both mathematical and common sense ways.

4) Stories of the Jamaican athlete and Crystal Cox are not comparable to Kamila's story. First, because every event has its own nuances. Second, because these stories are old and WADA, CAS and other institutions have certainly evolved since.

I hope I didn't forget any of your points that you reiterate in every single comment.

P.S.: no need to reply to my comment. I won't read it anyway.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

How the ISU has done it is perfectly logical. If they start redistributing the points the would have to change the points tally for every single team. This is a very clean way to do it you put a cross through Russia's 74 and make it 54. Japan are moved up to first place in the short and free. You can't add 10 points to Japan's tally because ROC has already had those 10 points deducted from the tally.

No, the opposite. You remove the 9 points from Japan's tally for coming in second, and add 10 points to Japan's tally for now being in first. You remove the 8 points from Canada's tally for coming in third, and add 9 points for Canada now being in second. Otherwise, ROC still benefits from Valieva's participation because those countries who placed behind her are all denied 1-2 points (if they made the free) from a lack of re-allocated placement points.

Using your/the ISU's "perfect logic", that's like saying Loena Hendrickx shouldn't be awarded a Euros bronze medal, because Valieva already was awarded that bronze medal and then it got taken away from her. Like the medal, the 10 points don't just vanish into thin air because Valieva was DQ'ed - they are awarded to the next placing skater/country.

You acknowledge that Japan are moved up to first place in the short and free, and thus by extension Canada is moved up to second place in the short and free. So what is your rationale that by moving up and getting re-allocated to the placements based on ROC's disqualification, they don't get the team points associated with the placements based on ROC's disqualification?

 

[Amei]

So I'm hearing grandpa's tap water, I'm hearing cake... what's the one they're going with as of late?

Do you understand I'm not proposing a new theory, I wondering why they didn't use a defense that was successful for someone else, aka ingested through tap water vs. what they went with

 

[el henry]

Do you understand I'm not proposing a new theory, I wondering why they didn't use a defense that was successful for someone else, aka ingested through tap water vs. what they went with

Maybe because despite the obsession with one old case as a comparison (which shows how weak Kamila's "defense" was) they knew they couldn't prove tap water?

It's not as though "tap water" is some magic mantra that will automatically excuse a doping violation.

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

Do you understand I'm not proposing a new theory, I wondering why they didn't use a defense that was successful for someone else, aka ingested through tap water vs. what they went with

Oh sorry, I thought the cake thing was actually the ROC's new excuse/story. TFW one can't distinguish when an internet poster is joking or the Russian federation is releasing an official statement.

 

[4everchan]

Exactly.... Let's just see the maths differently.

potential maximal scoring for any country in all disciplines but women is 10 for each segment (20 total).

potential maximal scoring once Valieva is D/Q is now 9 for each segment (18 total)

So ROC is favoured by the decision because the other countries, though they still have a skater in the women's event could not score 20 points anymore. It undervalues the women segment of the competition in which one they no longer have a contender.

It's completely unfair to the clean athletes whose contributions have been ipso facto lowered.

 

[Diana Delafield]

I know that drug testing, if it even existed, was not as sophisticated forty or fifty years ago, but I can't find anything (just using Google) to say if any East German Olympic athletes were ever disqualified retrospectively, after it became known that their state system was forcibly feeding steroids to athletes as young as small children, in the guise of "vitamin pills"? The few who refused to take the pills were then dropped from the country's training program, but what about the many others who won medals in multiple sports while drugged?

This is tangential to the topic of Kamila, I'm just curious about what happened to all those East German medals and records -- or was the idea of so many disqualifications just too big a problem to cope with, too late, and any such idea was dropped?

 

[CanadianSkaterGuy]

Exactly.... Let's just see the maths differently.

potential maximal scoring for any country in all disciplines but women is 10 for each segment (20 total).

potential maximal scoring once Valieva is D/Q is now 9 for each segment (18 total)

So ROC is favoured by the decision because the other countries, though they still have a skater in the women's event could not score 20 points anymore. It undervalues the women segment of the competition in which one they no longer have a contender.

It's completely unfair to the clean athletes whose contributions have been ipso facto lowered.

This is a great way of putting it. Due to Valieva issue, and the ISU's decision, the maximum points that any team could be awarded in each discipline of the Winter 2022 team event is:

Pairs: 20 points
Dance: 20 points
Men: 20 points
Women: 18 points

How is that "perfect logic", Skating91?

The ISU has made some weird and frankly stupid decisions over the years, but unlike protecting shady judging or silly IJS rules, what should be a cut-and-dry decision is so comically wrong that the whole world is laughing at them for it — and delegitimizing figure skating because of it (never mind the fact that a member of the ROC was doping and they're still allowed to get a medal for it, but the math isn't even corrected). Yu Na's SP should have been called Send In The ISU... because they're a bunch of clowns and if I was someone who worked for or works with them, I surely wouldn't openly admit it these days.

 

[Caliban]

WADA, CAS and other institutions have certainly evolved since

Cool story, but no. In 2023 PanAm games Brazilian taekwondo team keep gold medals, even after their team member was DQ for doping. Article about this is here few pages back.

 

[icewhite]

I know that drug testing, if it even existed, was not as sophisticated forty or fifty years ago, but I can't find anything (just using Google) to say if any East German Olympic athletes were ever disqualified retrospectively, after it became known that their state system was forcibly feeding steroids to athletes as young as small children, in the guise of "vitamin pills"? The few who refused to take the pills were then dropped from the country's training program, but what about the many others who won medals in multiple sports while drugged?

This is tangential to the topic of Kamila, I'm just curious about what happened to all those East German medals and records -- or was the idea of so many disqualifications just too big a problem to cope with, too late, and any such idea was dropped?

Not in general and no Olympic medals, since as far as I know there is a time limit in which that needs to happen (8 years). It depends on the individual case. Although the systematical doping has been proven the records are only erased if it is proven in that individual case - and even then only sometimes. Most of the most successful athletes never came forward to confess, so that these cases especially are those that remain unproven. So there is a bunch of records heavily stained/ everyone knows they aren't for real and most medals and titles stayed with the athletes.
For instance Marita Koch still holds the record for 400m. She kept all her medals and never admitted she was doped even though the documents including a letter from her exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marita_Koch

 

[beachmouse]

Rearranging scores like this in the team event opens a can of worms and sets a precedent that could create a mess maybe it causes a team not involved in the disqualification to moved from 3rd to 4th several years down the track through the redistribution of points. No country would accept that.

Rearranging scores and rolling down awards is fundamentally part of how medals are allocated.

If it was a can of worms, that would have come up some time around Ben Johnson.

15 year olds are protected people under WADA rules. This is why the 15 year old swimmer who had multiple drugs in multiple tests in her system was given a mere reprimand, while WADA were gagging for a 4 year suspension of Valieva before the investigation in 2022 had even concluded.

All this talk about the Jamaican, and zero talk about the 14 year old Indian swimmer who was provisionally suspended removed from the start lists from the Asian Games when she had a doping positive.

So I think RUSFED have done what the Indians did and provisionally suspended the athlete in question.

 

[Jumping_Bean]

All this talk about the Jamaican, and zero talk about the 14 year old Indian swimmer who was provisionally suspended removed from the start lists from the Asian Games when she had a doping positive.

So I think RUSFED have done what the Indians did and provisionally suspended the athlete in question.

And, in fact, even the Jamaican swimmer was provisionally suspended from October 2022 until mid-July 2023, when she was let off with a reprimand. Why it took from April (first positive test) until October for her to be temporarily suspended, only God knows.

 

[Sam-Skwantch]

It was the lab's fault that Valieva skated in the team event. Had the result been returned 30 hours earlier then of course Russia could have put any top 15 female skater from Russian championships in her place and secured gold. < snip >

I one thousand percent agree that the IOC and the WADA are largely responsible for their own mess here. They need to overhaul the oversight and cooperative communications within the organizations and no one with outstanding/questionable tests should be allowed into the Olympic Village until matters are resolved.

Even with that said….I don’t think there is any way that people within RusFed or Team Eteri were unaware of the test in question. Someone from RUSADA would have likely told someone and I believe that they were aware that there was AT LEAST A CHANCE that Kamila had a test out there that could come back positive. If this is in fact true then I have to conclude that RUSFED gambled big putting her in there. A gamble that didn’t pay out!! I’m okay with them winning bronze and the ISU only zeroing out Kamila’s scores actually but I think they are VERY lucky with this outcome.

Just my two cents

 

[beachmouse]

I one thousand percent agree that the IOC and the WADA are largely responsible for their own mess here. They need to overhaul the oversight and cooperative communications within the organizations and no one with outstanding/questionable tests should be allowed into the Olympic Village until matters are resolved.

WADA is massively underfunded. It’s why it largely outsources testing to national level anti-doping organizations and expects them to do the right thing and only really directly tests maybe top 50 athletes/possible international medal winners in individual sporting events and gets involved at that level.

The IOC on the other hand, they’ve got the dollars/euros/swiss francs to do a testing sweep of confirmed and likely entrants with a month to go before the opening ceremony. If anyone’s got the budget to test all 1,000 athletes at, say, the USA Swimming Olympic selection meet, it’s the IOC.

Yeah, maybe it’s a few fewer nights in five star hotels for ‘the suits’ as Craig Lord like to call them, but they should be willing to move down to the Novotel for the integrity of the Olympic movement.

 

[SkatersWaltz]

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but I find it interesting and pertinent to the discussion. At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Marion Jones was part of the team that won the gold medal in the 4 X 400 m relay. She was disqualified for doping and was stripped of her gold medal along with everyone else on the team. However, after the other 7 women on the team (those who competed in the prelims and finals) filed an appeal to the CAS, their gold medals were restored. At the time, this was the reasoning of the CAS:

"The panel found that at the time of the Sydney Olympic Games there was no express IOC or IAAF rule in force that clearly allowed the IOC to annul the relay team results if one team member was found to have committed a doping offense," CAS said.

Note that the IAAF is the track and field equivalent of the ISU.

Although this doesn't explain why the ISU reallocated the points the way that they did, it could explain why the Russian team wasn't disqualified outright. They simply have no rule in place that allows them to do so. You think they would have learned from Sydney but 22 years was obviously not enough time .

Here's the full article:

Marion Jones' Teammates Win Back Stripped Medals

7 U.S. Athletes Win Back 2000 Olympic Relay Medals Stripped due to Marion Jones Doping

www.cbsnews.com

 

[JeanA]

Kamila who received 10 points in each program, has been disqualified therefore her 10 points she scored from each program have been removed from her team's overall tally.

And they've moved everyone up the team event the Japanese skaters are first in both now. Everyone moved up one place. You can't give two skaters 10 points in the same event.

I see your point, as I assume the ISU/IOC does too. The issue is that those who favor the Canadian's viewpoint have a point too. If Valieva is removed from both of her events, their viewpoint is that the new first place person should get moved up to 10 points and so on. And this is valid, because in the semi-finals (whatever they called it) both the men's and pairs' only had 9 competitors. The highest score achieved in the men and pairs was still 10 points. The lowest received 2 points. The scoring points didn't start at 1 from lowest to highest up to 9, but 10 from highest to lowest down to 2. And with those two extra points, the Canadian team would place ahead of the ROC team by 1 point. IMO it is perfectly reasonable to believe that. If Valieva had gotten sick or injured herself and had to withdraw in the semi-finals there would only have been nine skaters and they would have been scored like the men and pairs were. I think I am understanding that correctly.

 

[JeanA]

Not sure if this has been brought up yet, but I find it interesting and pertinent to the discussion. At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Marion Jones was part of the team that won the gold medal in the 4 X 400 m relay. She was disqualified for doping and was stripped of her gold medal along with everyone else on the team. However, after the other 7 women on the team (those who competed in the prelims and finals) filed an appeal to the CAS, their gold medals were restored. At the time, this was the reasoning of the CAS:

"The panel found that at the time of the Sydney Olympic Games there was no express IOC or IAAF rule in force that clearly allowed the IOC to annul the relay team results if one team member was found to have committed a doping offense," CAS said.

Note that the IAAF is the track and field equivalent of the ISU.

Although this doesn't explain why the ISU reallocated the points the way that they did, it could explain why the Russian team wasn't disqualified outright. They simply have no rule in place that allows them to do so. You think they would have learned from Sydney but 22 years was obviously not enough time .

Here's the full article:

Marion Jones' Teammates Win Back Stripped Medals

7 U.S. Athletes Win Back 2000 Olympic Relay Medals Stripped due to Marion Jones Doping

www.cbsnews.com

I'm glad you mentioned this, because I have been wracking my brain wondering exactly WHY in 2000 the women's gymnastics team from Romania was able to keep their Team Gold after Andrea Raducan was stripped of her All-Around title for having taken Benadryl (or whatever). This helps me understand that. Thank you.