On Tuesday, the sports information space was stirred up by the words of the Olympic champion in rowing Sergei Fedorovtsev, who was disqualified for four years for trimetazidine found in a doping sample. The same drug was found in the winner of the 2022 Olympics in the team figure skating tournament Kamila Valieva. In the suspicious silence that has come around the doping case of student Eteri Tutberidze, this is practically a scream. What can be hidden behind this silence — in the material of the correspondent Sport.
The latest news on Valieva's doping case leaked into the information space in early May. American journalist Christine Brennan, the thunderstorm of the mixed zone at the Beijing Olympics, who did not let a single Russian skater go without a question about the terrible atrocity of Kamila, reported with reference to the CAS press service that hearings on the Russian woman's case are unlikely to take place before August. But this is also an extremely rough estimate.
Of course, due to uncertainty, in addition to Valieva, the Russian figure skaters who won the gold of the team tournament in Beijing, and members of other teams who, being in no way involved in this story, have not seen their Olympic medals for almost a year and a half, suffer in this situation. If you think about it, this period, even on the scale of human life — let alone a sports career — is not so small.And yet nothing compares to the experiences that Camila herself experiences all this time. For obvious reasons, she speaks very little on this topic in the public space — as long as the matter is in the legal plane, there is no place for emotions. But sometimes she can't help herself. And then others want to cry no less than the figure skater herself.
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«I grew up, a lot of things happened in my life, but what happened there strengthened me, I became It's strange, but I would like to say thank you for such moments, it strengthened me as an athlete and as a person,» Valieva admitted at the final press conference after the Russian Grand Prix Final in March.
By «what happened there» the Olympic champion means Beijing, where her life overnight turned into a reality show. But much more important is the period preceding the Olympics and the day when trimetazidine was in her body. RUSADA has been investigating the circumstances of the case for many months — even too long, since WADA in November last year did not wait for it to be completed and transferred the case to CAS. And so far there are not even any hints of the results.There is only RUSADA's appeal against the decision of its own Disciplinary Anti-Doping Committee, which recognized the absence of Valieva's fault or negligence in the violation. The appeal, frankly, is extremely strange — RUSADA, for some reasons known only to him, still demands to recognize the skater guilty, but to impose a minimum punishment on her — a warning. And this is despite all the repeatedly repeated theses prescribed in the WADA code that the responsibility of an athlete under the age of 16 for the contents of his doping test is extremely limited, and the main attention falls on the activities of his environment.
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Meanwhile, this is the key moment in this situation. If there is a reason to blame Valieva for a positive doping test passed at the age of 15, then it is necessary to explain why neither the coaching staff of Eteri Tutberidze, nor the doctors working with the athlete are in business. Silence here is far from golden. Otherwise, a seditious thought creeps in: are we really going to give Kamila to be torn to pieces by WADA in exchange for the honored coach of Russia continuing to bring medals to the country? When, of course, the country will be returned to the international arena.
The fact that the gloomy silence around the Valieva case is very likely not accidental was suddenly hinted at by an episode that took place on Tuesday on a seemingly unrelated The theme of the event was a business breakfast called «Sport under restrictions». The floor was taken by the Olympic champion in rowing Sergei Fedorovtsev — and rushed right off the bat.
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«I have the same situation as Valieva — before the 2016 Olympics, I was diagnosed with trimetazidine. Valieva was very lucky that this happened to her at the Olympics. A couple of months before them, she would have been changed, she would have safely served her disqualification. She had a dose of 2.3 nanograms per milligram, I had a dose of 0.8. They say that this is a microscopic dose, I have even less. We were the leaders of the season, we tested very often. When we already qualified, I they accused me of finding trimetazidine. Almost everyone turned away from me, few supported me, «he admitted, but the main sensation was ahead.
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“The fact that everyone took up the defense of Valieva, because it happened to her at the Olympic Games, she was very lucky with this. I was left alone. I sued, there were long hearings in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but I could not win, because I went against the system, even though during the investigation it was proved that the laboratory in Lausanne was wrong. I heard that one specialist said that in Eastern people, trimetazidine can be synthesized in the body at high loads. Do not take it for the truth, I heard about it. I had deviations in bilirubin. The situation is similar, but no one understands how this could happen. And no one understands Valieva either. And Valieva also went for an additional examination in December, because she had deviations in liver parameters, «said Fedorovtsev.
If the information about the dose of trimetazidine in Valieva's sample is not news, then the words that the figure skater underwent an additional examination for abnormal liver function are practically an information bomb. There is no need to question the words of the Olympic champion. He clearly knows what he is talking about, since the investigation probably compared cases similar to the Valieva case, including his case. By the way, Fedorovtsev recalled that the bobsledder Nadezhda Sergeeva, who also had trimetazidine, received it from a contaminated drug prescribed for liver problems and received from FMBA. Well, she managed to prove it and the period of disqualification turned out to be minimal — eight months.Returning to Fedorovtsev's statements about Valieva: he probably could have added a lot more interesting things if not for the three-time Olympic champion Alexander Karelin, who was sitting next to him, and snapped the speaker with the words «enough, not in the kitchen.» And, unfortunately, in this remark, it seems, not the desire to comply with legal formalities and minimize comments on the topic, but the unwillingness to wash dirty linen in public. «It boiled over,» the Olympic champion in rowing admitted, and even ventured to say a few more phrases after Karelin's intervention.
