BEIJING — Five, going on six, years ago, in the weeks before the 2016 Rio Games, an 18-year-old American rhythmic gymnast, Kristen Shaldybin, tested positive for a very low level of a banned diuretic called hydrochlorothiazide, or HCTZ.
The positive test, it was asserted, was due to the levels of HCTZ in the tap water she was drinking, straight out of the faucet.
In the years leading up to Rio, Shaldybin was living on Chicago’s upscale North Shore. Indeed, she is now a graduate of one of Highland Park High, one of the leading schools in the area.
Did the U.S. authorities assert then — as they did this week, amid the furor over 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva — that the credibility of the entire anti-doping system was at issue?
Not hardly.
Kamila Valieva practicing Sunday // Getty Images
Instead, they calmly allowed the process to play out.
And what do you know?
Shaldybin would go on to make history as part of the first U.S. rhythmic team to qualify on merit for the Summer Games. A team did compete in Atlanta in 1996 but through a courtesy berth given to all host nations.
The background:
On June 7, 2016, Shaldybin tested positive for HCTZ.
On July July 14, five weeks later, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced that she had ingested HCTZ “without fault or negligence,” the lab report “demonstrating very low parts per billion concentrations of the prohibited substance in the athlete’s urine sample.”
Given that, USADA concluded “on a balance of probabilities” that she “unknowingly ingested the hydrochlorothiazide through tap water obtained from the municipal water supply.”
Thus, it said, no sanction — no warning, no reprimand, no ban.
Appropriately, and for emphasis: Kristen Shaldybin was a clean athlete who represented the United States with dignity and grace. She did nothing wrong. Indeed, she did it right.
“USADA,” the agency’s release went on to note, “is responsible for the testing and results management process for athletes in the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movement …”
What’s this, the fox guarding the henhouse? An issue that U.S. authorities are seemingly always complaining about?
Prosecutorial discretion?
What?
This is why we should all, in the words of International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams, “take a chill pill” and let the Valieva process play out.
Valieva is 15.
Under the 2021 version of the World Anti-Doping Code rules, that makes her a “protected person,” which means she does not — unlike Shaldybin — have to show “no significant fault.” That is, she does not have to show how the banned substance at issue in her case, trimetazidine, or TMZ, a drug used to treat angina, a heart condition, got into her system. She does not carry that burden.
There have been any number of U.S. cases over the past number of years in which athletes — including prominent ones, like archer Brady Ellison, winner of three Olympic medals — have gotten off with no issue after confronting an issue that may, stress may, be exactly like the contamination case Valieva is very likely to present here in Beijing.
In December 2020, Ellison was cleared of an HCTZ matter, the source a prescription that didn’t list the substance on the label. USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said then that there had been at least 25 no-fault matters since 2016.
In none of those cases was it asserted that fault lines were threatening the entire system.
Indeed, in a USA Today story describing Ellison’s case, Tygart was quoted as saying, “If an athlete ingests a prohibited substance from a completely innocent source such as contaminated medication, meat or water and there is no effect on performance, there should not be a violation or a public announcement.”
And now, the Valieva matter — that, he says, represents a “catastrophic failure of the system”?
Isn’t it only because the Valieva case involves Russia, and there are Cold War-style political points to be scored, that suddenly this case has become so fraught?
But wait: we don’t have state-sanctioned doping in the United States. Right.
That’s because we, alone among more than 200-plus national entities in the Olympic landscape, don’t have a state ministry of sport. If we did, the United States undoubtedly would lead the world in discovering and executing amazing ways to cheat on a fantastic scale. Lance Armstrong, after all, was ruthless. From the USADA reasoned decision in 2012: “a massive team doping scheme, more extensive than any previously revealed in professional sports history.”
Our American hypocrisy when it comes to doping is fabulous. We still are on ‘A’ in the alphabet: Alex Rodriguez, the baseball star. A two-time acknowledged performance-enhancing drug cheat. Steroids! Testosterone! Human growth hormone! In an interview late in his playing career, A-Rod said he used drugs to manage chronic back pain but also because he wanted to boost his batting stats. He finished his 22-year career with 696 home runs and, it’s estimated, $437 million. He’s so wealthy he has been linked to the purchase of various professional franchises. He just broke up with JLo. He’s a big TV star.
So let’s ask: do performance-enhancing drugs work? If you could make $437 million by taking them, even if you had to, say, sit out an entire Major League season, would you?
If you say no, are you really being honest? Even with yourself?
How is it that so many Americans can get all furiously bent out of shape at a 15-year-old Russian when they so obviously and without the slightest guilt celebrate A-Rod?
Let’s not even get started about the NFL and the Super Bowl, happening Sunday. Who wants to hazard a guess about levels of performance-enhancing drug use in professional American football?
Which professional American leagues are not signers to the World Anti-Doping Code?
Correct answer: all of them.
When Shaldybin was cleared, it made almost no news. If you scroll her Twitter feed, you’ll see a picture of her meeting then-President Obama after the Rio Games. She was accused, and — again — cleared, so she was at the White House with her head high. To this day, the case is virtually unheard-of except in select circles. The then-president of USA Gymnastics, Steve Penny, said in a statement that the federation was “grateful for the assistance we have received in this process on behalf of Kristen,” adding, “Having a positive drug test result from someone’s drinking water is a real concern, and we appreciate everyone’s efforts in identifying the source of the issue.”
To be clear:
The panel of arbitrators meeting Sunday night here in Beijing may well decide to come down big-time on Valieva — that is, to reimpose the provisional suspension that RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency, lifted.
The TMZ that lit up the positive signal was, no question, in Valieva’s system. Any number of other athletes have had to bear the burden of “unfair” results when it comes to drug tests and what to do about the Olympics — the Romanian gymnast Andrea Raducan in Sydney in 2000, the U.S swimmer Jessica Hardy in 2008.
The difference is that Valieva is 15.
Raducan was 16, almost 17, during the Sydney Games.
Hardy was 21 in 2008.
Valieva is 15.
If she was in the United States, Kamila Valieva would be a sophomore — maybe even a freshman — in high school. Kristen Shaldybin was a high school senior the summer her drinking water was under the microscope.
Valieva is 15. She is 15!
At 15, most western legal codes recognize the notion that a girl cannot give consent. In other contexts, a 15-year-old girl, moreover, does not have adult “intent” as western legal codes would define it. Critically, the World Anti-Doping Code now recognizes someone under 16 as a “protected person.”
There’s also this:
Code section 10.10 deals with how to manage results. It says what you’d expect — a result obtained after a positive sample “through the commencement of any Provisional Suspension” is a goner, In the precise language of the code: “Disqualified with all of the resulting Consequences including forfeiture of any medals, points and prizes.”
Except — the sentence itself also includes a clause, a four-word wow, that deserves close consideration, and so back to the language we go: “through the commencement of any Provisional Suspension or Ineligibility period, shall, unless fairness requires otherwise, be Disqualified with all of the resulting Consequences … “
In this case, this context, what does or could that mean? “… unless fairness requires otherwise…”?
Valieva skated in the team event on Feb. 7. The sample wasn’t reported until Feb. 8. Is it “fair” to take away a gold medal when no one knew about the sample result? If, as RUSADA asserts, Covid played havoc with staffing levels at the Stockholm lab?
Is it fair to take away Valieva’s opportunity to skate in the individual competition, beginning Feb. 15, when, under any scenario imaginable, she no way was bellying up to some pharmacy counter and bellowing, gimme that TMZ? She’s 15. Either somebody gave it to her or there’s a contamination problem, or maybe — who knows? — both. She should pay for that? Under what theory? Is that “fair”?
What’s “fair”?
These are some, just some, of the fascinating angles on which the Valieva matter may well pivot.
in meantime, let’s all do take a chill pill.
If, right here, you want to scream, “state-sanctioned doping,” that’s another conversation. This, right here, right now, is what to do about — Kamila Valieva.
And, one more time, she is 15. Imagine this is your daughter, and how you would want her to be treated. You’d want due process. And fairness.
Just like Kristen Shaldybin got.