From the get-go, it has been entirely unclear why so much vitriol has been directed at Kamila Valieva.
She is still just 16.
Here is yet another call for everyone — repeat, everyone — to dial down the rhetoric, the anger, the urge to put Valieva front and center as proxy for everything Russian or Putin and the war. She is none of those things.
She is a 16-year-old figure skater who, when last seen, was performing at the Russian national championships with a charming down-to-the-move celebration of Jenna Ortega’s viral Wednesday Addams dance from the hit Netflix series.
Kamila Vamila’s in her hit exhibition performance at the 2022 Russian nationals
Again, seemingly everyone got it wrong. It was her post-competition exhibition, neither her short performance nor her free skate. People magazine? Wrong. CNN? Wrong. Today show? Wrong.
She finished second in the competition itself, behind 15-year-old training partner Sofia Akateva. Valieva rallied in the longer free skate; a fall on a triple axel in her new-this-year short program had her fourth heading into the free.
Again, meanwhile, the over-the-top criticism — the likes of Tai Babilonia, Meagan Duhamel and Mirai Nagasu suggesting on Twitter that a Russian girl celebrating American pop culture is somehow disrespectful and, moreover, a “complete insult” to the U.S. figure skating team from Beijing. Say what?
Isn’t this actually something akin to public bullying? The kind of thing that in the case of someone like Naomi Osaka others are so very quick to rush to condemn — but, somehow, because Valieva is Russian, is OK? Why? Valieva is just 16.
In Nagasu’s case, she said, “I wish AMERICAN media would reconsider their stance on these posts. Let’s not forget about the ongoing doping scandal and the war that’s going on.” Duhamel retweeted this.
So let’s see: a 16-year-old skater from a part of central Russia called Tatarstan, where more than half the population is Muslim — Valieva is widely understood within Russia to have Muslim heritage — performs a routine made famous by a 20-year-old American actress who hails from Palm Desert, California, and is of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, and this is inexplicably about the war in Ukraine?
Not a celebration of what connects us?
Especially about what connects — young people?
No matter where they are from? And what they do?
Sport, art and music. These are universal languages.
These things — this is at the very core of the Olympics? Indeed, it’s why figure skating in particular is the highlight of every Winter Games.
In the same spirit, when it emerged Friday that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency had predictably announced that Valieva bore “no fault or negligence” for the anti-doping violation that dominated the Beijing 2022 Games, the head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, once again went whac-a-mole.
In a text message to my very good friend Christine Brennan at USA Today — Christine and I are Northwestern classmates — Tygart said, “The world can’t possibly accept this self-serving decision by RUSADA, which has been a key instrument of Russian state-sponsored doping fraud and is non-compliant with the world anti-doping code.”
First of all, the “world” Tygart refers to is hardly the world. He means elements within the United States and certain western allies. Assuredly, China, India, Brazil and lots of other places in the emerging Global South could hardly care less what the Americans think.
Better yet, moralistically preach.
The double standard and the hypocrisy we level from our purported moral high ground here in the United States — it rests on quicksand — is outrageous. We cheat here, too. We simply don’t have a state ministry of sport. If we did, we would lead the world in figuring out mouseholes. It wasn’t all that long ago that USADA was calling Lance Armstrong’s operation “a massive team doping scheme, more extensive than any previously revealed in professional sports history.” Our massive blind spot is our pro sports leagues. Example A is the former baseball star, Alex Rodriguez. Here is an admitted user of performance-enhancing drugs who nonetheless is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and a fixture in our celebrity culture. Yet Kamila Valieva, who is just 16, is a target. Something is very wrong here.
For his part, Tygart relies on readers either a/ not knowing or b/ not caring about c/ the details. For him and so many others when it comes to Russia, it’s all about — the rhetoric.
The four-year ban imposed by WADA on Russia, cut in two by CAS, expired Dec. 17. Now what remains is for RUSADA to meet certain reviews. Then they’re compliant again.
Of course, there are risks with the Russians. All the same, as the Washington Post reported in late November, WADA had conducted a September audit of RUSADA. Separately, the ITA said it was monitoring athletes’ biological passports as well as collecting and storing samples for analysis.
To be clear: WADA knew that RUSADA was moving the Valieva case along. The WADA executive committee minutes show that RUSADA was due to have a hearing on September 29. (See page 39.) Seven months is hardly an undue amount of time in these sorts of matters. Yet because it’s Russia, in November WADA announced it had asked to take the matter directly to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Now, this — the announcement that, in fact, RUSADA had made its decision. Now, too, WADA is in the position of saying that it has to review the matter and appeal to CAS “as appropriate.”
The RUSADA decision made public Friday — no fault — is the only one likely on the merits. Valieva was just 15 at the time of the test, at the 2021 Russian nationals. That made her a ‘protected person’ under the rules. For her, at that the time, the rules are different.
This is why all the screaming is so absurd.
It’s also why the process needs to play itself out. Calmly.
She deserves that. So, to be frank, do we all.