Kamila Valieva of Team ROC reacts after skating during the women’s individual figure skating final on Thursday in Beijing.
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Kamila Valieva of Team ROC reacts after skating during the women’s individual figure skating final on Thursday in Beijing.
Catherine Ivill / Getty Images
The machinery of international sport created an extraordinary and harrowing spectacle in women’s figure skating at the Beijing Olympics, as young athletes struggled to achieve the feat of their lives without fail. don’t know all Their opponents were clean sheets. They did so with the knowledge that no medal ceremony would be held if the most popular, Kamila Valieva, took the podium.
Then the Russian teenager of The custom is clarifiedand she broke down and wept at the rink she once seemed destined to rule.
Doping expert April Henning, of the University of Stirling in Scotland, said: “It’s an extremely unbelievable result. “A 15-year-old under such stress and supervision shouldn’t be on the ice. At some point, the athlete’s health should be a major concern – especially when running. member is a minor.”
Just 10 days earlier, Valieva had confirmed the status of a talented generation by becoming the first woman to do the quad jump in the Olympic competition. Then rumors surfaced that she had tested positive for trimetazidine, a heart drug banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Inexplicably, the sample dates back to December – a result that should have prevented Valieva from participating in the Olympics. The case becomes even more complicated when she is a minor.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport allowed Valieva to participate in the competition, pending the results of the investigation.
“Regardless of the outcome of the doping investigation or the CAS decision that she can compete, Valieva has failed at every level of responsibility of care,” Henning said.
Valieva’s case has cause many questions about her coach and the other adults around her. It also threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the Olympics’ touted ideals of fair play and the effectiveness of drug policies to prevent cheating.
“Anti-doping is a mess,” said Henning, director of the International Network of Doping Researchers. She is a co-author of a book, Doping: History of Sports, which will be released later this year. We asked Henning about Valieva’s case and the anti-doping efforts can be improved.
Note: This interview has been edited and condensed.
Are young athletes like Kamila Valieva at greater risk of doping?
Yes. Part of the controversy surrounding Valieva is that she is considered a protected person under the World Anti-Doping Code. As we have seen in other sports, young athletes are vulnerable to abuse in various forms due to the imbalance of power between the young athlete and the coach, manager, federation, etc. , even parents.
We also understand that minors may not make decisions the way we would expect adults to.
Strict liability is a cornerstone of the WADA Code, as it is said to prevent athletes from providing a justification for how a substance ended up in their sample. But Valieva’s status as a minor makes this difficult, as minors can, in the worst case scenario, be coerced or coerced into using something they don’t want to use, possibly do not understand, or may not even know, they are using.
Even if they are willing to engage in doping, we have to question whether a 15-year-old can consent, especially in a high-pressure environment like elite sports.
Is the anti-doping system for major events like the Olympics as broken as many suggest?
What is clear is that the current system is flawed. One of the most obvious flaws was the absence of a voice from the athletes in the rule-making process. Yes, they are nominally included and anyone can comment when WADA is open for public comment, but power clearly lies with a handful of executives. onion.
Advocacy groups like Global Athletes It is clear that athletes need and want a voice and that governance reform is needed, but reform is slow and small-scale.
We have other models for anti-doping policy making, such as North American pro leagues and negotiating their doping policies. These distinctions are distinct from Olympic/WADA-administered sports and are sometimes seen as undervalued, but they do have athlete support.
There is a range of reform proposals, from calls for the criminalization of doping, to calls for liberalization of anti-doping rules, to a handful that call for a complete no anti-doping effort.
World Anti-Doping Agency officials speak to the media during WADA’s anti-doping press conference ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing earlier this month.
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Could a better test be an answer to the problem?
There are many tests that are extremely effective, but analysis can only be performed if samples are collected. If collection is ineffective – or in many cases absent according to WADA’s published statistics – then the sensitivity of the tests doesn’t really matter.
But that needs to be balanced against athlete rights and practical issues like cost and logistics. There are no easy answers, but if you’re not willing to understand why the current system is making such mistakes, it doesn’t look like many of the same answers will improve the situation in sports. .
Russia pops up the most for its doping – but how popular is it?
If we look at estimates from researchers using different survey methods and models, this number can range from 3% to 40% or more of athletes, depending on into the sport and the method used for the estimate. In other words, we don’t know for sure.
If we learn two things from Russia it is, first, large scale systematic doping is really possible. Second, the best systematic doping program is the one we don’t know about yet.
Before this figure skating scandal, many of us had never heard of trimetazidine. Have you seen doping strategies change away from steroids?
Possibly, though more likely sport specific. Assimilation agent [such as steroids] remains a widely discovered doping in sports where power and strength both benefit.
Certain substances become ubiquitous, but our lack of real understanding of these patterns is that our evidence often comes only from reported anti-doping rule violations, which most researchers All studies agree to underestimate the use of banned substances in sports.
However, research on the prevalence of stimulant use is difficult, as the stigma of admitting use is so great that there is no incentive for athletes to disclose use even long after. when they have passed the statute of limitations for any punishment.
