Valieva’s profile, and the looming Olympics, should only have increased that sense of urgency for Russia, he said. “If it’s a Wheaties box athlete like she is, you’re going to make sure everything is buttoned up before they go,” Tygart added.
The controversy threatens to further undermine confidence in the global antidoping system, particularly when it comes to Russia, which is serving the final year of a ban from global sports related to a state-sponsored doping scandal that corrupted events at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. The Court of Arbitration for Sport, the body that will hear the appeal against Russia’s decision to reinstate Valieva, already had watered down the punishment meted out to Russia for its attempts to cover up the scale of its cheating scheme.
More than 200 Russian athletes are taking part in the Beijing Games under the banner of the R.O.C., an acronym for the Russian Olympic Committee, because they are forbidden to compete under their nation’s flag or name as part of the ban.
The R.O.C. said in a statement that Valieva deserves to keep the “honestly won Olympic gold medal,” adding that she passed doping screenings before and after the positive test. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said “we boundlessly and fully support” Valieva, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
“Our message to Kamila is, don’t hide your face, you are a Russian, keep on walking proudly and most importantly, keep skating and beating everyone,” Peskov said.
The Russian athletes have been allowed to participate in the Olympics under special permission, and only if the governing bodies for their individual sports affirm they are “clean” of banned substances. Russia’s past actions also have led to Russian athletes being specifically targeted for enhanced testing, according to WADA, and the International Testing Agency, the group responsible for the antidoping program in Beijing. Yet there remains little public clarity about what that means.
For instance, it is unclear which Russian athletes faced targeted testing, or even if Valieva was tested en route to her gold medal at January’s European Figure Skating Championships in Estonia. The International Skating Union has provided no details of its testing procedures at that event, and it has offered no comment on the Valieva case beyond a brief statement that it would seek to reinstate Valieva’s provisional suspension.
