True Left

Kamila Valieva got a hero's welcome on her return to Russia, thanked fans on Instagram, then celebrated being home by going to a pop concert

The IOC, the International Testing Agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Court of Arbitration for Sport – it’s an impressive sounding collection of organizations meant to suggest transparency and accountability. In reality it’s an alphabet soup of incestuousness, designed with the sole purpose of providing cover for one another.

In Valieva’s case, it has worked to diabolic perfection.

The Russian Anti-Doping Agency blames WADA’s lab. WADA blames RUSADA. And CAS. CAS blames WADA. The IOC, and Bach, blame CAS. All they have to do is continue pointing the finger at each other for another three days and they’ll have successfully kicked the can so far down the road that it’s no longer in sight and everyone will forget about it.

“We went to court. We did not want (her) to participate and we lost the court case,” Bach said, giving the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “We have to respect the rule of law because if we are not respecting it, if we are abandoning the rule of law, there is no international sports anymore. So we had to accept this.”
...
“It is surprising and of serious concern to WADA that a CAS panel would see fit to depart from the clear terms of the (Anti-Doping) Code, which was subject to three consultation phases involving all anti-doping stakeholders, including athletes, over a period of two years before being unanimously adopted in November 2019,” WADA huffed in a response Friday to the release of the full CAS decision, which allowed Valieva to compete in Beijing despite a positive drug test Dec. 25.

“This sets a dangerous precedent, which WADA hopes and expects will be corrected by future CAS Panels.”

Yeah? And just who will make that happen? The system was constructed to give everyone plausible deniability, and the IOC has stacked the various “independent organizations” with its own people to ensure no one gets out of line.
...
The current president of CAS is John Coates, the longtime Australian IOC member who is currently serving his second term as vice president and who, oh by the way, just happens to chair the IOC’s Legal Affairs Commission.

That’s right. If an athlete breaks an IOC rule, it’s Legal Affairs that hands down the punishment – which the athlete would then appeal to CAS.

Nope, no conflict of interest there!

As if that’s not slimy enough, Coates also had a big hand in devising the new process for selecting host cities, first used to choose the host for the 2032 Games. Which went to Brisbane … Australia.

A UK relay team has been stripped of its silver medals from the Tokyo Olympics after a sprinter failed a drug test
...
Sprinter CJ Ujah tested positive for a banned substance after the Games in August, according to a statement from the Court of Arbitration for Sports.

Ujah, who was part of silver medal-winning relay team and and also competed 100-meter sprint at the Olympics, was ordered by the CAS to forfeit the medal he won at the Tokyo Games.

His 4x100 relay teammates — Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, Richard Kilty, and Zharnel Hughes — were also stripped of their silver medals for the event, the CAS said.

CAS said in its statement that Ujah told officials that he "had not knowingly or intentionally doped, suggesting that the source of the prohibited substances could have been the ingestion of a contaminated supplement."

Valieva, who has dominated her sport during this Olympic season, took off awkwardly 25 seconds into her performance on her opening jump, her triple axel. She clumsily stepped out of it, but didn’t fall.
...
But for all this drama, when Valieva’s score popped up, it was good enough to take the lead, then maintain it as the final four skaters could not reach her lyrical heights. It’s not a large lead, 82.16 points to 80.20 for her training partner Anna Shcherbakova, but she’s in first place.

That result was, well, awful. The young woman – girl, actually – who should not be in the competition is leading the competition.

This was all wrong. Valieva was cheered by the sparse crowd when she was introduced, cheered when she took the ice, cheered when she finished. A small but boisterous Russian delegation contributed mightily to that cause, but still – a young woman who doped was welcomed as if she was any other competitor.

Each day that goes by, the stain on these Games, and the Olympic movement in general, grows darker.

'Dirty Cheaters.' Olympians Let Loose on Kamila Valieva and the Russian Doping Controversy at the Beijing Olympics
...
“Dirty cheaters, and we are accommodating them,” says Adam Rippon, who helped the U.S. win a team figure skating bronze at the 2018 Games. “I don’t know how the Olympics recovers from this.”
...
“They shouldn’t be here at the Olympic Games,” Rippon says of the Russian team’s repeated doping violations. “They’re clowns.”
...
The repeated doping violations from Russian athletes have been a plague on the Olympic movement and its professed to commitment to clean competition and a level playing field. “I feel sick to my stomach. What I’m feeling is my whole dedication to my sport, to my community and to my country — I’m questioning it all,” says retired Canadian skater Scott Moir, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in ice dance. “I’m questioning why I walked into schools for the past 12 years of my life and told kids what pride I took in being an Olympian and what that means, and what power sports has in bringing the world together, for fair play and the Olympic morals that we all believe in.”
...
Rippon agrees, and points out the stark contrast with how RUSADA handled Valieva’s violation, by initially suspending her from competing in Beijing but then lifting that suspension, to the way the US Anti-Doping Agency managed the case of star sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson before the Tokyo Olympics last summer. Richardson tested positive for marijuana just before the Games began, and was banned from competing. “It really shows how Americans deal with it, and how and how RUSADA deals with it — they don’t,” he says. “They pretend it doesn’t happen, and pretend that people are picking on them.” Richardson herself reacted to the news that Valieva will continue to compete, raising yet another issue affecting social tensions, by noting “the only difference I see is I’m a black young lady. It’s all in the skin.”

Critics have said that the doping issue, particularly with the seemingly constant violations among Russian athletes, can be traced to weak sanctions for breaking the rules. “A complete and total ban from all international competition is the only thing that works,” says Rippon. “It’s heartbreaking to think about the athletes who have spent their lives training, but the Olympics took a big blow today and I don’t know how it recovers from this. A lot of people have lost faith in the Olympics and in clean sport.”

'A permanent scar on our sport': Figure skaters outraged over Kamila Valieva verdict
...
"The panel considered that preventing the athlete to compete at the Olympic Games would cause her irreparable harm in the circumstances," CAS Director General Matthieu Reeb said.

The world of figure skating reacted with near-unanimous outrage to the CAS’s decision:
...
Rippon’s fellow 2018 teammate and bronze medalist Bradie Tennell also shared a similar message about how the decision presented an attack on the sport’s reputation.


...
Former Canadian Olympic gold medalist and two-time pairs world champion Meagan Duhamel shared Rippon and Tennell’s sentiments, adding that she wants nothing to do with the sport if doping is allowed.

How is anyone going to take the women’s event seriously now? We were just told illegal drugs and abuse are okay. If that is what this sport is about now, I want nothing to do with it.
February 14 2022. The day the Olympic spirit died.
...
Many U.S. figure skaters drew comparisons to teammate Jessica Calalang’s anti-doping suspension, applied by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in February 2021, before the 2021 national championships. Calalang’s suspension was overturned in September 2021, after 4-chlorophenoxyacetic acid (4-CPA), the banned substance, was found to be commonly found in cosmetic products she was using.
...
Jessica was suspended for MONTHS. Protocol can change from athlete to athlete??? NO.

What a slap in the face the Kamila Valieva decision is for athletes who don't cheat

BEIJING – What a dark day this is for the Olympic Games and the thousands of athletes who play by the rules and do not cheat by taking performance-enhancing drugs.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has spoken, and it has made an awful decision: Russia’s 15-year-old superstar Kamila Valieva, who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug less than two months ago, will be allowed to continue to compete in the Beijing Winter Olympics.
...
It was a remarkable few hours at these Olympic Games. What a slap in the face the CAS decision was for every athlete everywhere who has done the right thing, who has asked to be tested more to prove they are not cheating, who have lived their lives for a level playing field, people like Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps and Michelle Kwan.

And what a devastatingly awful message this is to the Russians: Keep doping, especially your minor athletes. You’ll get away with it on a technicality every time.

The Olympic Games lost today. Clean sport lost. Cheating won. Russia’s state-sponsored doping system won. The bad guys won.

It’s natural to have two conflicting thoughts on the status of this 15-year-old: sadness and anger on her behalf for what the adults in her life did to her, and even more sadness and anger about a decision allowing someone who used an illegal substance to continue to compete in these Games.

You can feel sorry for Valieva and still know that the CAS decision is wrong, very wrong.

Likewise, Russia will almost assuredly keep the gold medal it won in the team competition earlier in the Olympics.'