Sometimes it’s just a few pills from child prodigy to sin.
Kamila Valieva is a figure skater, only 15 years old. Her short career tells the story of the Olympic dream: where everyone competes peacefully, only the very best will win. No matter where, no matter how old.
That was Pierre de Coubertin’s idea of the Olympic idea. One more footnote: You have to follow the rules.
Kamila won: Olympic gold with the team. Toeloop and Salchow she jumps four times, never managed a woman at the Olympics. She stood the jumps. And then it fell so hard.
In December she tested positive for the heart drug trimetazidine in Russia. It’s on the doping list. Kamila was provisionally banned, the Russian anti-doping agency Rusada lifted the suspension for the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) sees it differently. Now the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has to do it.
Make a judgment about a child, and quickly: Tuesday is the short freestyle, two days later Kamila is supposed to win gold. For Russia. “Kamila, don’t hide your face,” boomed a Kremlin spokesman, “go anywhere proud!”
Now they tug and shove and yell, the girl is a political issue, but all she wants to do is ice skate. Nobody believes that she took the pills on purpose. Maybe a doctor was sloppy, that would be bad. Maybe officials want gold at any price, that would be even worse. Then the Russians did not shy away from doping children themselves.
“Kamila is not to blame here,” defends the ice princess. “This scandal is a dramatic turning point for your young and promising career,” says Witt. “I sincerely hope that there are enough people by her side to protect her so that she doesn’t break.”
She copes well with pressure, says the girl from Kazan: “Sometimes it even drives me.” Sometimes. Yet.
A fallen prodigy, crushed between higher, faster, further. Kamila from Kazan would not be the first.