Play It Again Sports Skate Return Policy
BEIJING — Figure skating prizes the value of keeping up appearances, smiling for the world while everything's going to hell.
But the sport can't smile its way through this crisis. As Russia'southward Kamila Valieva resumed competition at the Olympics on Tuesday despite a positive test for a banned drug, some peers bankrupt a longstanding lawmaking of decorum and spoke out.
"I call up it's completely unfair to the residuum of the competitors," Chinese American skater Zhu Yi told Yahoo Sports. "It's the fact that everybody else is make clean and she tested positive."
As Valieva took to the ice for Tuesday night'south short program, where she would qualify first ahead of Thursday night's free skate, 16-yr-old American Alysa Liu glanced over her shoulder, and acknowledged that Valieva's presence in the event was "a piffling odd."
"I just don't know enough details to accept a solid opinion on it," Liu said. "But pushing that aside, a doping athlete competing against make clean athletes obviously isn't fair."
Throughout the evening, nearly skaters carefully danced around the subject. But Liu admitted information technology had been a topic of chat amongst teammates. Several skaters said they'd struggled to escape information technology on social media. Reporters crowded around first-time Olympians like Mariah Bell to inquire not about their performances, or their experiences in Beijing, but nigh the scandal. Its looming presence over effigy skating'southward summit, multiple athletes said, was "deplorable."
"The whole matter is really sad," Sweden's Josefin Taljegard said.
Tuesday night at Beijing'due south Capital Indoor Stadium marked one of the more dramatic evenings in the sport's history, only not for any on-water ice heroics. 30 skaters took the ice, merely all eyes in the arena focused on the 15-year-old Valieva, who right at this moment happens to be both the most talented and well-nigh controversial female skater in the world.
Valieva'south positive exam for a banned heart medication, stemmed from a sample submitted Dec. 25. But a six-week turnaround, which U.Due south. anti-doping chief Travis Tygart called "admittedly inexcusable," delayed reporting of the consequence until after Valieva had helped Russia win gold in the Olympic team consequence — a aureate so controversial the medals withal oasis't been awarded.
The circuitous doping legal system then placed Valieva's fate in the easily of the Court of Mediation for Sport. CAS, citing a provision that protects minors, kicked the can further down the route past giving Valieva the correct to participate while withholding judgment on her guilt. Critics of the CAS's decision, including many of the almost prominent names in the sport, weren't interested in such legalistic hair-splitting.
"I am so aroused. The ladies event tomorrow is a consummate joke," sometime Team USA skater Adam Rippon said Mon on Twitter. "So many Olympic experiences stolen from clean athletes who got here without the help of performance-enhancing drugs. What a shame."
The CAS leaned hard on Valieva's youth equally a mitigating gene against her guilt, and some fellow skaters expressed sympathy. For many, though, the caption held little weight.
"Nosotros accept to remind ourselves that she is just 15 years old, a minor, and I know more than than anyone what it's like to compete at an Olympic Games at 15 years old," former U.S. skater Tara Lipinski said on NBC merely prior to the competition. "But a positive [drug] test is a positive exam. She cannot skate."
"If you can't play off-white, and so you tin can't play," Lipinski's announcing partner Johnny Weir said, "and information technology is a shame because she is a tremendous athlete."
Switzerland'due south Alexia Paganini said: "I experience sorry for her, only rules are rules, and they should be followed."
Liu said: "I feel like if you can skate here, y'all can also go sent back [home]."
All of which charged the air at Capital letter Indoor Loonshit across anything the Olympics had seen this twelvemonth. Chinese fans filled nigh all bachelor socially distanced seats in one one-half of the arena. Media from around the world flocked to the stadium in numbers far greater than those for Nathan Chen'due south golden medal functioning five days before.
Valieva, the 26th of the 30 skaters who performed, took to the ice while Karen Chen of Team USA awaited her scores, smoothly skating the length of the rink equally a warmup. She skated over to her charabanc for a few last words of advice, hopping up and down on her skates and looking, for only a moment, like a 15-year-sometime.
She began her routine at 9:51 p.1000. local fourth dimension, skating to "In Memoriam" by Kirill Richter. She moved with a grace and fluidity that fix her apart fifty-fifty in an arena total of Olympians, and the music — and the abiding whirr of photographers' shutters — were the simply sounds in the building. Over the class of iv minutes and 27 seconds, she landed a sequence that included a triple flip, a triple axel and a triple flip/triple toe loop combination. She had only the briefest of stumbles, merely they — and mayhap the weight of the by week — were enough to leave her in tears every bit she wrapped her routine.
Later the music stopped, she continued skating for another infinitesimal, pain and tears evident on her face, earlier finding her way to the edge of the rink to clutch a small stuffed fauna and expect for her scores.
NBC'due south commentators pointedly declined to hash out Valieva's routine in item. "All I feel I can say is, that was the curt program of Kamila Valieva at the Olympics," Weir said.
Valieva and teammates Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova — dubbed the "quad squad" considering of their power to pull off the incredibly difficult quad rotation in competition — could become the first trio of women from the same nation to capture a Winter Olympic podium.
Valieva concluded up with a score of 82.16, vaulting her into first place. Shortly afterward, Shcherbakova and Trusova snared the 2nd and fourth spots, respectively. Japan'due south Kaori Sakamoto is in tertiary.
After she finished, Valieva stalked through a "mixed zone" by dozens of reporters, her head down, her face sullen. She clutched her blimp animal, walked briskly, and did not end to take questions.
The Russian delegation subsequently opted not to bring Valieva to the post-competition news conference. Shcherbakova and Sakomoto were both asked nigh Valieva, just declined to comment.
"I will non say anything about this state of affairs, sorry," Shcherbakova said.
Valieva's qualification means that Thursday'southward long program volition add a 25th member. If she medals, at that place will be no anniversary, as the IOC is guarding against the possibility of her existence butterfingers later on the fact.
She will return to the ice in 48 hours with the run a risk to capture what would be one of the most controversial aureate medals in Olympic history. Information technology has overwhelmed the result, and these Games, and the athletes partaking in them, and that's what frustrates them.
"I recollect a lot of u.s.a. are really excited near the skating here," Paganini, the U.South.-born Swiss skater said. "And then that's not really what we're focusing on."
"It's a trivial upsetting," she said, "that at present the conversation is putting the sport in a really bad light."
Source: https://sports.yahoo.com/completely-unfair-as-kamila-valieva-returns-to-the-ice-competitors-sound-off-143052001.html
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