Hana Chan

The Russians are coming up soon. Which gives us plenty of opportunities to see Eteri's eternal resting bitch face and the never ending clown show that is the international judging team. Here's hoping that Kaori pulls out a miracle and denies Russia it's podium sweep.

Given how quickly this drug metabolizes and the high dosage found, it's pretty much impossible for this to be an incidental dosing. We'll have to wait for the second specimen t be tested but if it matches the first, there is no way that they can argue that the test was faulty or that the dosing was not deliberate. Of course, they'll try because... Russia. But here's hoping that the IOC and WADA lower the boom on them. Totally agree. Eteri is a veritable gold mine for Russia's sports program and she's closely linked to the government so there's no way that they'll let her be sacrificed. Anyone else though... trainers, doctors, skaters... they're all fair game but Eteri will emerge unscathed. Which is pretty absurd as she's the head coach and responsible for everything that happens at her rink.

It's a combination of both. The technique that Eteri teaches works so long as the body is exceedingly light and thin (no boobs or hips). It stops being effective once these girls are unable to stave off puberty and start maturing. So they manage on as little nutrition and hydration as possible, are weighed daily to ensure that their weight doesn't deviate by more than half a pound and the work themselves into the ground relentlessly. Then their backs are destroyed by the torqueing from those jumps, and they try to make this faulty technique work with a body that isn't that of a 13 year old boy any longer. An athlete might be able to overcome poor technique or abusing their bodies, but trying to overcome both all but impossible as evidenced by the wreckage that Eteri leaves behind her.

There are allowances in the code to allow medically necessary medications. Simone Biles was allowed her medications for her ADHD. It had to be registered and the athletes end up being monitored relentlessly to ensure that the medications are not being used in a way that can enhance their performance. Simone said that she was probably one of the most tested athletes in history. There are numerous medications that can be vital for people's health but in the hands of someone medically healthy can markedly improve strength and recovery. I work with hematology/oncologists and medications like darbepoetin (used to help the body replace red blood cells) are vital for patients with anemia and some cancers but have been used to dope because it allows the blood to oxygenate better; Allowing athletes access to medications that they genuinely is possible but it requires clear instructions, openness and rigorous oversight. The problem is when you have an actor like Russia that has the mentality of doing whatever they can get away with that upends the faith that the system can work. And as we see, everyone suffers as a result.

It's very sus, to say the least. And the idea that the Russian anti-doping agency should have been allowed any authority to overturn her immediate suspension is pretty laughable given the history of doping in the Russian sports programs. They're not allowed to test their own samples, but can make the calls about whether or not to suspend someone with a positive doping test?

Well, add this to the "IOC completely missing the plot" list: https://sports.yahoo.com/not-a-great-deal-of-similarity-between-sha-carri-richardson-and-valieva-cases-072235847.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall In a nutshell, the IOC is claiming that Sha’Carri Richardson got suspended by the US Anti-Doping agency, which is what prevented her from participating in the Olympics and that the IOC had nothing to do with it. Technically, that is true. But what makes Sha'Carri's case to enraging in comparison to Kamila's is that the US actually upholds the standards of clean sportsmanship that the Russians flout on a regular basis. We can argue about whether or not marijuana should be on the prohibited list (though I can hardly consider it a performance enhancing drug as when I use my very potent gummies, I'm lucky if I can find my own feet), but Sha'Carri tested positive for it and accepted the penalty with a lot more grace that I would have shown. Russia, OTOH, delayed in having Kamila's specimen tested in a timely manner as they are required to do so that the results only came out after the start of competition. What is especially enraging is that for a country that is not allowed to manage its own anti-doping program because they've been proven to be corrupt for so long, this is still being used as an excuse to keep Kamila in the competition. Russia has done nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt that this was an honest error and the more evidence that comes out, the more it appears that there was deliberate doping going on and this was not accidental or incidental. Other athletes have spoken out about the tremendous care they've taken to avoid inadvertently taking any medications that could come up on a drug test and with there being a collection of cardiac medications coming up in Kamila's test, her excuse doesn't fly. And it's not outside the realm of possibility that all of Eteri's girls are medicated and they just messed up on the timing of Kamila's dose so that she was the only on (so far) that came up with a positive test. By all rights, everyone from Eteri's rink should be banned from competition until this is cleared up. But that's not going to happen because the IOC is too damned dense and spineless to see what is right in front of them.

This is not something that easily can be answered, as we've had some absolute legends start their Olympic careers at very young ages. Sean White was a kid when he launched his Olympics career and it's shocking when you think of how many years we've watched him compete and he's retiring now at the ripe old age of 35. But I think it needs to be on a sport by sport basis and where there are problems, then it needs to be addressed. One 11 year old competing in skateboarding is a very different situation than having generations of Russian teenagers being used up like toilet paper. For the casual viewer of the sport, who may tune in only for the Olympics, there are only the men that can be followed for more than one Olympics. The video I posted made a point about the lack of longevity in 99% of the women competing and that it's hurting the sport. The stars become disposable. While Yuzuru Hanyu can fill any venue that he wants to perform in because he's built up fans all over the world in his 10 year career as a senior, the women who won gold medals over the past decade have been pushed out of the sport. Viewers in the US were invested in Nathan Chen's victory because they remember his SP collapse the last time around and they wanted to see him bounce back (even if they are unaware of how well he's done competitively the past four years). It's heartbreaking to see young women leave the sport because they're too physically broken to continue, or because they've simply matured enough that they aren't competitive in their own federation. And the media has a big role in this as they held up Eteri's girls as icons of the sport while referring to Mariah Bell as "ancient" at the age of 25. That even in Eteri's rink, the instant that the newest 14 year old is ready to jump into seniors, her current champions are all but shoved out the door because they simply cannot compete with the newer kids.

This is well worth watching as it addresses what we've been discussing. It's the second part to the video that I posted earlier.

LOL! We're too busy loving how Yuzu is making the ISU insane by not politely retiring, playing the social butterfly during the gala practices and getting the rare thirst trap.

They don't have good jump technique period. I get that Eteri gets applauded for getting so many high-level jumps out of her proteges, but the technique that she teaches them isn't a good one. They pre-rotate, which puts tremendous extra strain on their backs (notable since many of her former students suffer from severe back problems as they get older). Sure, they get the rotations in but I'm endlessly frustrated that the pre-rotation is never called out by the judges. Compound that with the strictly controlled diets, lack of hydration and apparent doping that we've got more than enough reason to suspect is not an isolated incident, Other coaches outside of Russia have said outright that if they adopted techniques that Eteri uses, they would be run out of the sport. About fucking time, because I was totally fed up with the constant tongue baths that Eteri's skaters routinely received. Here's hoping that with the narrative about Eteri's alleged genius as a trainer is starting to fade that the judges will take note and start scoring them more reasonably.

As bad as what is going on at Eteri's rink in particular and the Russian sports program in general, that doesn't excuse the judging that we saw today. It's bad enough that Eteri's girls are unjustifiably overscored, but then we get insult added to injury that many of the other girls were criminally underscored.

And it's not as if her jumps flow well in the programs. She's gotten a bit better, but a lot of the times she comes to nearly a full stop after a jump and it's pretty unpleasant to watch. I can admire her athleticism, but that's only part of the sport.

Ouch - The Daily Beast is pulling no punches: "Weeping Russian Drug Cheat Skates Straight Into Gold Medal Position" https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-figure-skater-kamila-valieva-in-gold-medal-spot-after-womens-short-program?ref=home

It also, IMO, has to do with how the US media promoted him as "The Quad King" in the run up to Pyeongchang and then watching him totally flub his SP. They trumpeted his "redemptive" FS (which basically was just him whizzing around the rink, throwing quads without any real program just to get the BV as elevated as possible). It's a good think that I follow other media channels who also noted that Yuzuru had a remarkable showing as he was coming off of what could have been a career ending injury and still managed to give a WR scoring SP.

Thank you! I'm glad that I'm not the only one who noticed this. Again, it's not that I don't think that he doesn't deserve to win often (which he does strictly on the technical difficulty of his programs) but his execution is pretty wonky on some elements and artistically... I find his artistical elements pretty bland. He's a much more straightforward kind of skater than Jason, Yuzuru or Yuma and I'm curious to see how his dominance over the past quad would have played out if the US media and skating fed weren't so determined that he would have this remarkable "redemption" since he clearly should have won the OGM the last time around (since Yuzu was still injured) and would have if he hadn't spent his SP polishing the ice with his backside.

Bingo! It's frustrating because it's usually obvious when TPTB want a specific skater to win because the magic PCs show up to inflate their scores. As I said earlier, I had no issue with a lot of Nathan's wins over the past few years because he is a very good, technically proficient skater. But with the USFed and even ISU wanting him to get this big redemption from the last games, his PCs were clearly boosted more often than not. He clearly deserved his gold medal, but the margins were IMO a bit sus. It's been noted before how often Eteri's girls see their scores markedly drop, not because they're not skating as well as they'd done in the past, but just because there's a new 15 year old from her stable who made the jump to seniors and excite the judges. It's less about actual performance on the ice and more about promoting the newest star.

This is always going to be issues with scoring since with the artistic element, figure skating is always going to be to a degree subjective. I've been arguing for years that while I often agreed with Nathan Chen winning his events that his PCs were pretty inflated compared to other skaters, but I have never seen such a divorce between the performance on the ice and the scores. Yes, Eteri's young girls always have inflated scores (which come back into some sense of reality once a new Eteri girl arrives on the scene) but this was ridiculous. And this is the kind of thing that critics of the sport point to when they want to argue that it's not a real sport. It's very disheartening for fans like us who follow it. Short of Kamila and Sasha biffing every single element in their FS, I don't see any scenario where they don't take the top spots on the podium. It's sad and it's gross and I'm so angry for the other young women who put in so much effort just to be thrown aside because they're not Russian and trained by the ISU darling, Eteri.

There is zero justification for these scores. None whatsoever. Everyone else is blatently underscored, and the PCS for all the Russian girls are far outside the realm of believability. None of them deserve to be in the top group, but here we are. If this doesn't bring an outcry to revise the scoring system to prevent this kind of blatant abuse (like we had after the Salt Lake City fiasco) then any legitimacy this sport has is dead.

Yeah, and my ex-boyfriend caught an STD off a toilet seat.

Some Russian posts in social media are pointing at the ADD medications that Simone Biles took, routinely accusing her of doping and using that as a justification for excusing this. The differences are that 1) Simone's medication was for a specific, appropriately diagnosed medical condition, 2) her treatment was cleared with WADA and 3) she was one of the most tested athletes around to ensure that she wasn't using her medication at a dose that went beyond what she was medically cleared for. If Kamila had a medical condition that required trimetazidine for its management, then it should have been cleared prior to her entering competition. It wasn't. It also is odd that her sample was not prioritized for testing as the top skater for her country. The Russians got caught doping and now are going to be laughing at the rest of the world because nothing is being done to punish them.

The thing is that I feel genuinely sorry for Kamila (and Alexandra and Anna) because they are genuinely not at fault for this. They had their dreams of winning the biggest prizes in their sport and went with the coach that everyone says will help them get there. They didn't know about the abusive treatment and doping and being forced to compete with injuries before they signed on. They just wanted to win at the Olympics. And no matter what happens, there will be a cloud over their heads. Kamila is known now to have a doping violation and it's hardly a leap to assume that Alexandra and Anna followed the same regimen ordered by Eteri and her team of compliant quacks. It's win at all costs, regardless to the physical and emotional damage done to these young girls. But hey... Russia will get to claim their dominance in the sport and get some pretty heroines to trot out before they get tossed to the trash heap in favor of the next group of talented children.

Their thinking, as I would understand it, is that her career would be damaged. We know about the "Eteri Expiration Date" and this is her one chance at the Olympics. That doesn't make it right because we know that if she were 18, there would have been little question about disqualifying Kamila. It's clearly set up one set of rules that the Russians can exploit because they are only having skaters who are little more than children jump into the senior division and everyone else that has actual adults skating. I can't say that I'm surprised by this outcome, but I am disappointed. There's no question that this decision stinks, but it's hopefully going to give the ISU and IOC some real teeth in pushing for serious reforms and perhaps at least extending the ban on an official Russian team competing for a few more years because we know that the Russians are not going to seriously investigate this and hold anyone responsible. I'm not holding my breath, though since the Russians have so much sway with the IOC and if having a state lab rigging drug tests isn't enough to get completely banned, this will be nothing. I do feel for Kamila because she's the least responsible party, but this sends a terrible message to the rest of the field and I think that nothing short of a complete walkout by every other female skater would get the message through that this should not stand. We really do need to have a reasonable minimum age for competing as a senior (I would argue that 17 would be fair) that would put the field on a more even level. It would also remove the impulse to burn out your skaters by the time their 18 if you can't even have them in international competition before they're nearly that age. Raising the minimum age seems to have helped with women's gymnastics, so we'll have to see how this goes. In some good news, it looks like we might be able to cross one potential retirement off our watch list. Yuzuru "Mad Man" Hanyu had his press conference today and made it pretty clear that he's not ruling out a 4th Olympic games. While I do understand that he's not going to be the top competitor as he ages, he is still a very strong skater (when the ice isn't tripping him up and he's able to avoid injury). Hopefully he'll go back to Canada where Brian can rein in his his crazy and Yuzu can also help mentor the new generation of skaters that Brian is bringing up. As a fan, I'm kind of happy that I may get a few more years of watching him before he does retire. Yeah.... that doesn't look like someone ready to call it quits just yet.

It's actually worse than that. They are trying to make this a Russia vs the World issue. There are posters of Kamila with angel wings being put up in Moscow and social media is being flooded with pro-Kamila and pro-Eteri posts. It feels like Russia is loving getting to use this as a Nationalist propaganda tool, which could explain why Kamila is not being shielded from the media. I could easily see them waiting for her to be disqualified from the Olympics so they could have plenty of footage of a crying 15 year old having her dreams shattered when it's been her coach and the circle of people working at the Sambo rink who are to blame. The Skating Lesson has been following this very closely and the information he'd found out about the doctor attached to Eteri has been fascinating. Someone is going to have to explain to me how a doctor who has already been banned for doping athletes has been allowed to have any role in this mess.

The problem for Kamila is that this would, effectively, be a lifetime ban. There is a lot of talk about 17 being the "Eteri Expiration Date" since that's the age when she usually discards her aging skaters. Sadly, even if she ends up continuing her career, the age when she would be the most successful will be behind her. It's a sad situation and while I agree that Kamila can't be held completely (or even mostly) responsible, she can't just be allowed to slide because of her age. As I said earlier, if she's old enough to compete as a senior, then she'd old enough to abide by the rules. But everyone in charge at her skating club responsible for overseeing her training and medical care need to be investigated. The problem is that if the Russians are investigating, I doubt that anything will come of it.

And this is where I think that it hurts the sport. Gymnastics was always popular but got a major boost from having athletes being able to compete for more than a single quad. There's a real why men's figure skating gained so much attention because you had so many veterans returning to compete. Mock the Fanyus, but they've had a decade of watching him compete in the seniors to get invested in him as a performer. Nathan got the compelling story about coming back from crushing disappointment in Korea to becoming the new Olympic champion. We got to watch Jason prove that he could be competitive even without having a secure quad under his belt. And we'll have the pleasure of watching Yuma and Jun-hwan continue to mature and develop as athletes. We don't get that from the winners on the women's side anymore. The winners might skate for another year, and then they're gone. We can admire their talent, but they become more or less interchangeable. I felt horrible for Evgenia when she should have won the gold medal but got overshadowed by her younger teammate and then got shuffled off to the sidelines. It's terrible for the girls and terrible for the sport. I miss the days of following skaters like Michelle Kwan, Yuna Kim, and others who survived in the sport for more than a single quad. And for girls to have the misfortune of being born at the wrong time to be 15 in time for the Olympics not to automatically be shut out.