Beijing 2022

Imagine, just imagine, being 46 feet up there above the bottom of the halfpipe

Imagine, just imagine, being 46 feet up there above the bottom of the halfpipe

BEIJING — Kaishu Hirano of Japan is 19. He competed here in snowboarding, in the halfpipe. He did not win. His brother, Ayumu, did. No matter. Kaishu flew.

One of the basic tricks in snowboarding is called a method air. In this case, a backside air. You grab the heel edge of the board with your hand and pull the board up, arching your back. If all goes well, until gravity does its thing, for just an instant you are emblematic of human possibility there in the air, silhouetted against a clear blue sky, elegant, graceful, flying, literally flying. The American Ross Powers did this on his winning run in the pipe in Salt Lake City in 2002. Now, Kaishu Hirano.

The difference is that Kaishu Hirano flew way higher. From the bottom of the pipe to where he was up there was more than 46 feet. Above the lip of the pipe: 24 feet, four inches.

When the first drafts of the record of these 2002 Beijing Winter Games are written, there likely will be many references to Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old Russian figure skater, and other controversies. Those are of course very real. The Games can sometimes spotlight some of the most challenging issues confronting our fragile and broken world.

But what about the achievement — the striving, the joy — of Kaishu Hirano and roughly 3,000 athletes from around the world?

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.

Mikaela Shiffrin: the No. 1 athlete role model ever, in defeat

Mikaela Shiffrin: the No. 1 athlete role model ever, in defeat

BEIJING — Athletes are assuredly role models. Mikaela Shiffrin was the No. 1 role model ever Wednesday. In defeat.

Understand: the reason you go to the Olympic Games is to win. Especially when you are arguably the best female alpine skier ever.

But when you crash out of your first race after just a few gates, the one where you are the defending Olympic champion, and then in your second race, the one in which you have won literally dozens of times on the World Cup tour, you ski out again, once more literally just seconds into the race, what then?

What then is the profile in vulnerability and, yes, courage that Shiffrin delivered Wednesday — though it may not feel like it to her just now, and may not perhaps for a very long time.

Eileen Gu: like Kobe Bryant, a generation's personification of the Olympic ideal

Eileen Gu: like Kobe Bryant, a generation's personification of the Olympic ideal

BEIJING — Standing atop the big air ramp here at Shougang before her third and final run, 18-year-old Eileen Gu rocked to her left one, two, three, several times. She blew a kiss.

Then she turned, pointed her skis at the ramp and threw down.

The Winter Olympics will never be the same. Winter sport in this country of 1.4 billion people will never be the same. In a Games marked by Covid and so much more, here was — joy. Here was the arrival of a personality the likes of which the Olympics, indeed worldwide sport, has not seen since perhaps Kobe Bryant, an international figure able to transcend boundaries. And, moreover — a young woman. The future.

Unsolicited therapy talk with Mikaela Shiffrin

Unsolicited therapy talk with Mikaela Shiffrin

BEIJING — Mikaela Shiffrin and I have very little in common. She is a she. I am not. She is blonde. I am not. She is in her 20s. I’m — uh, not. Further, to be exceptionally obvious, she is a very, very good skier. I am not. Frankly, I am quite terrible on skis, and it’s something of a joke in our house that if I never, ever go on skis ever again that would be super OK. Why do you think I moved from Chicago to California?

You don’t, however, have to be a very good skier to appreciate very good skiing. Shiffrin is, without question, and with all respect to Lindsey Vonn — whom I have known for nearly 15 years — the greatest female skier in the history of Planet Earth. Not hyperbole. Even Bode Miller says so. “I’m a huge fan,” he told Ski Racing. “She’s the best racer that I’ve ever seen, male or female.”

One of the things you learn after writing for these many years about what separates the best from the rest, what makes someone an Olympic champion, is that at this level everyone has physical ability. The difference-maker is mental. One, the best hate to lose even more than they want to win. Two, they have an almost preternatural ability at go-time to be calm, almost zen. That is the being-in-the-zone thing.