BEIJING: Thomas Bach said Friday it was “chilling” to see how Kamila Valieva’s coach treated the Russian teenager after a doping scandal engulfing the skater culminated in an error-strewn performance at the Beijing Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee president said he was “very disturbed” to see the 15-year-old fall several times and sob in the women’s figure skating final on Thursday.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is looking into Valieva’s entourage, after the doping controversy tarnished the second week of the Games in the Chinese capital and thrust the young skater into the glare of the global spotlight.
“I was very disturbed when I watched it on TV,” Bach said, adding Valieva was treated with “a tremendous coldness” by her coaches after the calamitous free skate routine which saw her finish fourth and miss out on a medal.
The pre-Games favourite for gold was distraught afterwards but Russian coach Eteri Tutberidze was seen demanding to know what had gone wrong as Valieva came off the ice, her head bowed and looking pale.
“Why did you let it go? Why did you let it go? Tell me,” Tutberidze can be heard saying.
Bach told a news conference: “When I afterwards saw how she was received by her closest entourage with what appeared to be such a tremendous coldness, it was chilling to see this.”
The doping affair will rumble on long after the Games have ended and Valieva could yet be punished.
The teenager was controversially cleared to carry on at the Games despite failing a test in December for trimetazidine, a drug used to treat angina but which is banned for athletes by WADA because it can boost endurance.
Bach said that seeing Valieva’s Russian teammate Alexandra Trusova also in a highly agitated state after her silver medal-winning routine confirmed his concerns about the team around the teenage skaters.
“I was pondering about whether you can be really so cold but when I saw and read today how Alexandra Trusova was being treated, I am afraid that this impression I had last night was not the wrong one,” said Bach.
“All of this does not give me much confidence in this close entourage of Kamila.”
– Minimum age proposal –
Valieva’s predicament has focused attention once more on Russian athletes at Olympic Games and the IOC’s decision to allow Russians supposedly deemed free of doping to participate.
They are taking part in Beijing under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee because Russia as a country is serving a ban as punishment for a state-sponsored doping programme.
Bach said that Valieva had “a drug in her body which obviously should not be in her body.
“The ones who have administered this drug in her body, these are the ones who are guilty,” he said, while also defending the IOC’s actions.
Russia’s sports minister was unimpressed by Bach’s intervention.
“It’s debatable to say the least to determine and judge the behaviour of a coach and judge the relationship with an athlete from TV,” Oleg Matytsin told TASS news agency.
Figure skating’s governing body, the ISU, said in an email to AFP that it will vote later this year on a proposal to raise the minimum age at which figure skaters can compete in senior competitions to 17.
Also in figure skating, Chinese duo Han Cong and Sui Wenjing smashed their own world record for the second time this Olympics to lead the pairs short programme.
– Another gold for Gu –
In more good news for the hosts, Californian-born freeskier Eileen Gu won her second gold medal of the Olympics and third medal overall.
The 18-year-old’s scintillating victory in the halfpipe confirmed her as the face of the Olympics and was the antidote the Games were crying out for after Valieva’s distress.
Gu, who switched allegiance from the United States to China in 2019, said: “It has been two straight weeks of the most intense highs and lows I’ve ever experienced in my life.
“It has changed my life forever.”
Norwegian biathlete Johannes Boe won the 15km mass start event to give him a fourth gold, the most so far of any competitor at the Games.
It helped take Norway’s number of golds in Beijing to 15, topping the medals table from Germany, on 10, and the United States on eight.
The Games conclude on Sunday.
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