The scandal surrounding Kamila Valieva raises fears the regime may end the teenager’s career before it has a chance to beginThe offensive, we are told, will take many forms. The first sign may well be a cyber-attack knocking out the power grid and internet, jamming mobile phone networks. Well-funded paramilitaries within Ukraine’s borders will be encouraged to create as much disorder as possible. There will be a blitz of propaganda, misinformation and false-flag operations. And then – finally – the blood sacrifice: the trained young men and women prepared to lay down their bodies for greater Russia.Perhaps we all got a taste of how this might play out on a much smaller scale on Thursday night. As a distraught Kamila...
This is not a problem happening just in Russia – a win-at-all-costs mentality is affecting young athletes more than everWhat price an Olympic gold medal these days? We know about the blood, sweat and tears, but the costs paid by the 15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva in pursuit of the glittering prize rose exorbitantly over the past week in Beijing. The already unstable Olympic currency of values, integrity and humanity devalued further. There was almost universal horror watching Valieva’s coach, Eleni Tutberidze, in action. Her harsh questions as Valieva sought to escape the rink after her unravelling performance caused consternation. Even the fence-sitting International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, spoke out. But after the initial repudiation and disgust, her approach...
At every turn sports leaders have talked tough on Russia while diluting punishmentsTo paraphrase Mario Balotelli, why is it always them? Was it not enough that Russia corrupted the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi with a devilish scheme that involved Federal Security Service agents passing steroid-riddled urine samples through a mouse hole before swapping them with clean urine? The act was so devious that the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, later called it “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games”. Continue reading...
The mess in Beijing is not down to the court of arbitration for sport but a collective failure of coaches and organisationsThe decision to allow the Russian prodigy Kamila Valieva to take part in the women’s figure skating competition less than two months after testing positive for a banned heart medication has cast a shadow over the glamour event of the Winter Olympics that will persist for years to come, further tainting the reputation of a Beijing Games already beset by controversy.Armed with a quiver of point-gobbling quadruple jumps, the 15-year-old Valieva set the world record for combined total score in her first outing as a senior in October and has improved from there, skating with a deeper maturity and...
A look back at the history of past Games in warmer climates, plus the tale of a speed skater who had the odds against himIn 1988, shortly before the Winter Olympics got under way and amid rising concerns about the event suffering from good – which for the purposes of the Games would be bad – weather, 500 residents of Calgary with the surnames White, Winter or Snow gathered to perform a snow dance. The event concluded with them chanting “White winter snow, white winter snow, let it go!” before releasing helium balloons with their names on.It did not help: warm winds soon arrived to melt much of what snow there was, temperatures peaked at 18.1°C and 33 events had...