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On Wednesday, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), through the mouth of the organization’s general director Veronika Loginova, probably gave my most detailed commentary on the Kamila Valieva case. It was dedicated to the role of the entourage of a 15-year-old figure skater at the time of a doping violation, which was being investigated by the organization. The Sport correspondent expresses his thoughts on why there is not a word on this topic in the CAS verdict in the Valieva case — and whether they can appear in the future.
br>»The authority to prove the involvement of the environment is not always enough»
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“If there is a person who acted as an accomplice or even the initiator of taking a prohibited substance by Kamila, who at that time was only 15 years old, then this “criminal” — there is no other way to call him — must be punished, including criminal liability for inducing a minor athlete to violate anti-doping rules rules. In Russia, unlike most of even the most advanced countries in this area, criminal liability for this was introduced in 2016,” said Loginova, and this sounded like a bolt from the blue in the mouth of the head of the organization, which in the fall of 2023 stated that the details of the case will not be made public.
However, the harshness and even cruelty of the verdict of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which could most easily be justified by the dominance of the Anglo-Saxons in this organization, in all likelihood, changed this position. After all, even in the operative part of the decision to disqualify Valieva for four years, there are explanations why the panel, consisting of an Anglo-Australian, an American and a Frenchman, made exactly such a choice. “Having carefully studied all the evidence, the panel came to the conclusion that Valieva’s side failed to prove the unintentionality of the doping violation,” the verdict says, in part.
If the court did not believe that Kamila’s doping was an accident, then it is the role of her environment in her case that needs to be paid attention to. The World Anti-Doping Code speaks about this when it comes to “protected persons” — and Valieva had this status in the process, since she was 15 years old at the time of the doping violation. It is unlikely that the CAS panel could have considered that the girl had read articles on the Internet about the benefits of trimetazidine, went to the pharmacy herself, bought it and decided to take it before one of the key tournaments of the season. In Russian figure skating, not a single adult athlete will ever do this, because from childhood he is accustomed to doing only what the coaching staff and doctors tell him. And here is a child.
The investigation into the actions of the coaching staff and doctors should have been carried out by RUSADA during the process. And WADA announced back in the winter of 2022 that it would monitor how it is being conducted. Especially after the President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach spoke about Tutberidze’s coaching methods during the Beijing Games, who did not like the severity of the mentor with which she met young Kamila after an unsuccessful performance in the individual tournament.
However, how Tutberidze educates his students is not Bach’s concern — nor, in fact, mine, and everyone else’s, except the athletes themselves and their parents. But adherence to the principles of clean sport, educational work in the field of anti-doping — this is something we have every right to be interested in.
To begin with, here is WADA’s commentary on this topic. «In the first phase, WADA's Independent Intelligence and Investigations Unit was to oversee RUSADA's investigation into what role, if any, the athlete's support staff played in this matter. This task was made more difficult by the fact that WADA's Intelligence and Investigations Unit was unable to travel to Russia. and therefore carried out oversight remotely,» the organization said in a statement to . «The second stage depends on what the details of the CAS decision are. WADA will carefully study it and see if it opens up any further possible lines of investigation.»
Why the court did not believe in Valieva’s negligence
The job of a journalist is to interpret certain official statements. For me personally, these comments from WADA and RUSADA mean the following: a full investigation into the actions of Valieva’s coaching and medical staff was not conducted. However, it seems that our side initially looked for traces of trimetazidine that entered Kamila’s body in another place. During the Beijing Olympics — in Kamila's grandfather's glass. And during the hearings at CAS — unless, of course, the publication «Soviet Sport» is deceived, where the editor-in-chief is Evgeniy Slyusarenko, known, among other things, for a number of materials on the topic of anti-doping — in a cake that was baked for his granddaughter by the same grandfather who took then this drug.
Of course, it cannot be ruled out that this is true. However, 100% evidence — and this follows from the published CAS verdict — was not provided, since it refers to the balance of probabilities, which was considered by the arbitrators. And the likelihood that Valieva, on the eve of the Russian Championship, indulged in cakes, to put it mildly, from the point of view, again, of anyone familiar with the world of figure skating, is close to zero. Read at least the comments on sports resources, where they rightfully noted: if Valieva’s coach Eteri Tutberidze kicked out, according to the figure skater’s mother Elena Kostyleva, this athlete from the group for having extra yogurt in her hands, it’s hard to even imagine what she would have done with Kamila if she had found out about cakes before the main qualifying start of the Olympic season.
“Even when she was interrogated, I told her: “Kamila, quickly tell me what you had on the day of the short program.” She told me: “Some volunteer treated her to ice cream, some masseuse Chekmareva treated her to tea, someone else with something else.” — there's more.» I say: «Seriously? And did you eat ice cream and drink tea there? And this all happened? Kamila…” She: “Well, I don’t know, I’m somehow there.” We teach and teach, but like this. I think she probably doesn’t have more faith in anyone. This is where she changed,” here This is how the honored coach of Russia described the student’s behavior.
Self-quoting for a journalist is a generally recognized evil, but now I don’t consider it shameful to quote words from my material dated November 2, where, as many thought, I characterized such a statement quite critically. Now I can only repeat a fragment of that text.
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“Let’s say that the arbitrators, with all the naivety that is unlikely to be characteristic of lawyers who have gone through a hundred doping cases, will believe that a figure skater, who is constantly drilled into her head the thesis that you cannot leave a plate unattended in the canteen, will drink anywhere water from an open bottle and taking such a bottle from someone else’s hands, completely forgets about all this and gratefully accepts everything that she was treated to at the St. Petersburg Yubileiny Sports Palace — ice cream, tea, “something else.” Like a somnambulist, she walked , took, drank and ate. Let's say they believed.
After this, accordingly, the version of sabotage by an attacker becomes working. But will it not occur to the judges that this does not fit with the fact that trimetazidine was found in Valieva’s body in an insignificant amount? In the first CAS document, published following the meeting of the visiting board at the Beijing Olympics, which admitted Kamila to the individual tournament, the wording generally appears — “below the detection threshold.” It sounds a little strange what this means, let chemists figure it out, but one thing is clear — this is a grain, if not a speck of dust, of a prohibited substance.
Now let's imagine ourselves in the place of the villain. He is planning an action at the Russian Championship to take Valieva out of the game. In this case, it doesn’t matter with what motive — to clear the way for a competitor or to use the incident as a provocation in the future — but at the same time he performs it so carelessly and with such a chance of failure that for him it becomes a huge success to have at least some crumb of a prohibited drug in the sample female athletes Isn't it too complicated and risky a plan when, for the same purpose, it was possible to take a syringe and inject a more substantial dose of the “forbidden drug”?
Not a dot, but an ellipsis?
I don’t consider myself a visionary, but at that moment it was obvious even to a non-specialist that the interview with Tutberidze, as well as the lawsuit of the Russian team doctor Philipp Shvetsky against the German journalist Hajo Seppelt, if anyone would be taken out from under the hanging sword of Damocles CAS, it would be only them, but not Valiev. And so it happened. A unique figure skater, the likes of which have never been and probably never will be, received a four-year ban, after which only crazy willpower and the desire to prove the injustice of what happened can force her to continue her sports career. The rest won't work. And the coaching staff and doctors will continue to work.
By the way, you shouldn’t believe the stories that trimetazidine is an absolutely useless drug for figure skating. Of course, it will not help you perform quadruple jumps, as two-time world champion Evgenia Medvedeva quite rightly noted in her Telegram channel, but the drug can play a positive role in helping the heart bear stress. That is why this substance is on the prohibited list of the World Anti-Doping Agency — although, by the way, discussions about what is wrong with supporting the heart in elite sports periodically arise in the expert community. It is worth recalling that Valieva’s doping test, as officially reported by CAS back in February 2022, also contained approved hypoxene and L-carnitine, intended, like trimetazidine, to increase endurance.
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«WADA stated that it is possible that the investigation will be resumed after studying the full text of the CAS decision. We are ready to provide them with the necessary assistance within the framework of our competencies and capabilities. There are no complaints about the investigation previously conducted by RUSADA arose, everything was in accordance with the recommendations of WADA and the best practices of leading anti-doping organizations,” Veronika Loginova also emphasized in her comment.
Well, let’s wait. The reasoning part of the CAS decision may not be published due to the same “protected person” status of the 15-year-old figure skater at the time of the doping violation — but all parties to the process will definitely receive it. And, quite possibly, it will resume. So far, the criminals in this case seem to be the judges who decided not to take into account a number of mitigating circumstances and precedents in similar doping cases and who punished Kamila herself outright. But the CAS verdict in Valieva’s case may turn out to be not a full stop, but an ellipsis.