At the age of six, Kamila Valiyeva moved to Moscow to be trimmed to become an ice princess. Now the world is wondering how a banned heart drug gets into their bodies – and what that says about Russia’s sports culture.
from
Johannes Aumüller, Barbara Klimke, Beijing and Johannes Knuth
Kamila Valiyeva acted as if nothing had happened. Or more likely: she had to act as if nothing had happened. The Russian figure skater appeared quite early on Friday in the side hall of the competition arena in Beijing’s Haidian district, flanked by her colleagues Anna Schcherbakova and Alexandra Trussova. She did not make a public statement, she did her laps and, according to eyewitness accounts, Valiyeva, despite what she said, performed four quadruple jumps on the ice in the 45-minute unit, these difficult elements, which she has mastered like no other in the world of ice skating figure skating.