Russian To Judgment

My jaw dropped when I heard that Kamila Valieva - a fifteen-year-old Russian figure skater who tested positive for steroids at the Beijing Winter Olympics - is being allowed to compete in the women's figure-skating competition.

But she won't receive a medal if she places higher than fourth, so why worry about any of that?

(An investigation into the doping of Miss Valieva will start soon.  It will have an impact on the eventual results of the women's figure skating competition, but it is expected to take months.)

I have no doubt that Kamila Valieva did not intend to cheat.  After all, this is Russia - not Ireland.  ("Steve," my other self is telling me right now, "we don't talk about 1996 anymore!")  The Russian Olympic Committee - which competes for itself, not the Russian nation - probably gave her a steroid pill and told her it was a vitamin, and and you have a bunch of she-male swimmers in eastern Germany who went through the same thing back in the 1970s and 1980s.  Valieva is innocent.  That does not, however, make it hunky dory for the Court of Arbitration for Sport and the International Olympic Committee to let her compete even if she takes a second drug test and tests negative.  She should not be allowed to compete because the Russians tried to cheat by giving her a steroid and, by not letting her compete, it would send a message to the Russians and to everyone else - especially the host nation, China - that doping for an edge, even if it's done without the athlete being doped unaware of it, will not be tolerated.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport and the International Olympic Committee not only tolerate it, they've just endorsed it.

The ruling to let Valieva compete stated that "irreparable harm" would be done to Valieva because she, if she were to be banned from competition, would be penalized for something that is most likely not her fault.  But it's more complicated than that.  As sportswriter Dan Wetzel noted, "Valieva isn't just some competitor. Her ability to effortlessly land quads has, in just four months on the senior international level, allowed her to set nine world records and register the three highest scores of all time." The real irreparable harm, he says, would be sending the Russians a signal that they can cheat any old way they want.

"How about the irreparable harm to the skaters who haven't tested positive for a banned substance?" Wetzel asks. "How about the irreparable harm to the Olympics itself?"

The best we can hope for is for someone other than Valieva to win and for two runners-up not named Kamila by their mothers on the podium with the winner.  Oh yeah, I can assure you that the winner will not be an American.  Nathan Chen, after all, won the men's figure skating gold medal for the U.S., and given that figure skating is a subjective sport - it's base on opinions of judges not who crosses the finish line first - the judges in the women's competition are likely to move heaven and earth to make sure an American woman does not get on the top spot of the podium.  (Don't believe me? You'd have to go back to 1960 to find a Winter Olympiad when Americans won both men's and women's single figure-skating gold medals, and they were, respectively, David Jenkins and his future sister-in-law Carol Heiss.) So, although I wish the best for Mariah Bell, Alysa Liu, and Karen Chen (no relation to Nathan), I expect none of them to join the group of American female singles-figure-skating Olympic champions (with seven members, that group may be the most exclusive women's club in America). 

And that's a shame, because I think I can safely assuming that none of them are doping.  Which is more than I can say for anyone from Russia - who, ironically, competes for the national Olympic committee as opposed to the country because of a ban on Russia for, well, doping.

I'm confused too.