Kamila Valieva

Rough justice 4 teen girls: Kamila, u get 4 yrs 4 1st offense. Adults? Whut?

Rough justice 4 teen girls: Kamila, u get 4 yrs 4 1st offense. Adults? Whut?

From the get-go, there was never any question there was a substance in the Russian skater Kamila Valieva’s 15-year-old body that shouldn’t have been there.

The issues all along were: 1/ where did that substance, the banned substance trimetazidine, or TMZ, come from, 2/ and what to do about it, since she was 15, and in theory someone who is 15 ought not be treated the same under the rules, anyone’s rules, as someone who is, say, 32. 

Put aside everything else – and there’s so much connected to the Valieva matter, which threatened to all but eclipse everything that wasn’t Valieva at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games – and those two keys make up the core of Monday’s Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport judgment, which said those rules mean Valieva deserves to be treated like a grown-up. 

So, it said, she got what she deserves, the usual: a four-year ban.

For, let’s note, a first offense.

Raging and kabuki theater in Lausanne: again, the Valieva matter

Raging and kabuki theater in Lausanne: again, the Valieva matter

The raging and political posturing in Lausanne outside the Kamila Valieva hearing is, like almost everything about this case except for the one thing that matters most, absurd.

You would think, listening to the American figure skaters, that seemingly no one in the United States of America has ever committed a doping violation, and that by trying to pressure the Court of Arbitration panel hearing the case that they – and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, willing participants in this kabuki theater – are standing up for truth, justice and the American way.

What silliness.

Here is what matters: Valieva, as this column has pointed out time and again, was 15 years old when all of what happened went down. 

Again: less screaming, less vitriol. Kamila Valieva is just 16

Again: less screaming, less vitriol. Kamila Valieva is just 16

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.

The real doping outrage: American hypocrisy and the U.S. double standard

The real doping outrage: American hypocrisy and the U.S. double standard

EUGENE, Oregon — For the past five years, Kenya’s Lawrence Cherono has been one of the world’s top marathoners.

In 2019, he won the Boston Marathon. Again: the Boston Marathon. Is there anything more symbolic of American distance running than Boston, and #BostonStrong? That’s not a rhetorical question. Answer: no. That year, Cherono won the Chicago Marathon, too.

In 2021, Cherono finished fourth in the Tokyo Olympic marathon. Last December, he won the marathon in Valencia, Spain. This past April, he finished second in Boston. His personal best, 2:03:04, is the eighth-fastest of all time.

So where is the outrage, especially from all those, especially in the United States, who went all but berserk this past February over the Russians at the Beijing Winter Games, now that the 33-year-od Cherono has been provisionally suspended for the exact same substance that then-15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva got tagged for — and under eerily similar circumstances?

The hypocrisy files and 'irreparable harm': inside the Beijing loop and a Texas courtroom

The hypocrisy files and 'irreparable harm': inside the Beijing loop and a Texas courtroom

BEIJING — The news here Friday in the bubble — er, closed loop — was all about how International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach came down hard, and appropriately, on the 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva’s “entourage.”

“We are following the rule of law and we are feeling at the same time with a minor, with a 15-year-old girl who obviously has a drug in her body that should not be in her body and the ones who have administered these drugs in her body — these are the ones who are guilty,” Bach said, referring to Valieva’s Dec. 25 positive test for trimetazidine.

A few moments later, Bach turned to a World Anti-Doping inquiry into the people around Valieva. She crumbled on the ice Thursday night, sliding from first to fourth and breaking into tears, only to be met by her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, asking why she gave up, a moment that Bach called chilling and disturbing: “I hope that this inquiry will bring clarity so that the full truth is coming to light that the people who are responsible for this, that they will be held responsible for this — that they will be held responsible for this in the right way and when I say the right way, I say in the strongest possible way.”

When the mob turns on a 15-year-old, and she breaks

When the mob turns on a 15-year-old, and she breaks

BEIJING — That was awful to watch, heartbreaking, infuriating. It will go down as one of the worst moments in modern Olympic history.

Kamila Valieva is just 15. No one deserves the grievous public shaming she got here in 2022 in Beijing. And for what?

Predictably, on the ice Thursday evening, Valieva broke. She fell. She cried. Expected to win, she dropped to fourth, out of the medals.

Who is to blame for this? This is now the question.

Valieva skates as the rush to unwarranted judgment roars on

Valieva skates as the rush to unwarranted judgment roars on

BEIJING — People, let’s smell the coffee, please. The world is not black and white. Them and us. Americans: you want to make like U.S. Olympic athletes have never, ever used performance-enhancing drugs. Like no one in a position of authority at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee has ever had a doping run-in.

The glass house thing is truly unbelievable.

Valieva gets to skate. Why? She is 15. It's ‘fundamental’ fairness

Valieva gets to skate. Why? She is 15. It's ‘fundamental’ fairness

BEIJING — The vice-president of the United States and I were in law school together a few years back. It was in San Francisco, the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. She is two years behind me. I am class of 1987. She is 1989. Let’s just say she has gone on to greater heights.

But there’s this: I did pass the California Bar, and on the very first try! You can look up my license (inactive) at the State Bar website. It’s number 130832. After not even a year of practicing law with a big firm in San Francisco, I went back to journalism. The rest is history, or something like that.

I relate these matters not because being a lawyer makes me brilliant, or smarter than the average bear. We all know a lot of dumb lawyers. And there are a lot of good lawyer jokes. The point is this: having gone to law school means I was taught the ways of systems and to appreciate in particular the value of the rights of an individual. In legal systems, this means in particular the rights of an accused.

This brings us to the case of the 15-year-old Russian skater Kamila Valieva, who rightly and appropriately was cleared Monday by a three-judge panel of the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport to keep competing at these 2022 Olympic Winter Games, the panel citing her status as a “protected person” and, among other things, issues of “fundamental principles of fairness.”

The Valieva matter: taking a chill pill, and asking, what is 'fairness'?

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?

Everything in the Valieva case turns on this: she is 15

Everything in the Valieva case turns on this: she is 15

BEIJING — As close readers of the World Anti-Doping Code (hello!) would know, the right to appeal a provisional suspension is new to the 2021 version.

So.

Here at these 2022 Winter Olympics, amid the latest seemingly explosive crisis involving the Russians, and in this instance the 15-year-old skating sensation Kamila Valieva, we have about the most fascinating test case imaginable.