Media abuse against Olympic star Valieva is unethical & deliberate
4 Min Read
Just after all 6 Russian skaters won the ice-skating tournament this week, mainstream media releases Valieva's anti-doping test taken on December 25, 2021.
-
Kamila Valieva during Thursday's training. (Reuters)
Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, after being the first female figure skater to make a quadruple jump at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, faced a scandal that blew out of proportion in mainstream media.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), right after her win, made an announcement that Valieva's test is positive. Although the test was 45 days ago in mid-December, the announcement prompted anti-Russian propaganda and criminal prosecution threats from the agency, based in the US.
Rick Sterling, a journalist who has written extensively about doping in the Olympics, explained that what's happening to the 15-year-old is a huge distraction from the actual success of the Olympics, and that people have short memory: Russian athletes, more often than other nationalities, have fewer positive cases in the anti-doping test.
"Politicians and media in the West who hate China and Russia have hit the jackpot with news that Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned drug," says Sterling.
"This is a huge distraction from the ongoing events and success of the Beijing Winter Olympics. It is taking over the media. The fact that Russian athletes have been tested more often with fewer positive cases than most other countries is ignored. This story is very much welcomed by those who see China and Russia as 'adversaries.'"
This card was played immediately after all 6 Russian ice-skaters won the tournament.
The awards ceremony was on Monday, then it was postponed till Tuesday, then indefinitely, claiming the reason to be "Valieva's positive doping test."
Guy Mettan, a prominent Swiss journalist, looked into the matters: the first question to be asked, according to him, is over the conditions of the analysis of the sample, and secondly, over why the results were published after the competition and not before, or later.
Valieva gave a sample on December 25, 2021 to the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, which was sent to the WADA.
Sputnik writes, "In accordance with international standards for WADA, the time limit for loading an "A sample" is just 20 days from the moment it is received by the laboratory, President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov told journalists on 11 February. However, the test results came out on 8 February, i.e. 45 days after the sample was collected: "It is very likely that someone held this sample until the end of the team tournament of figure skaters at the Olympic Games," the ROC president said."
"There is maybe a will to proceed like this in order to compromise the Russian performances at the peak of the Olympic Games in order to give the case a considerable echo in the public opinion," said Mettan.
The Russian Olympic Committee, in an official statement, said that Valieva had tested negative before and after the 25 December 2021 test - the sample was taken for the European Figure Skating Championships in January 2022, and during the 2022 Olympic Games.
"The timeline of 45 days for WADA to report the adverse sample has actually, in many people's eyes, turned the matter from an anti-doping one to the welfare of a child," says Genevieve Gordon-Thomson, chairwoman of the UK Sports Association, and vice-chairwoman of the British Association for Sport and Law.
"No child should be in a position to be subject to any form of a doping scandal. They simply should not be abused in this way. Valieva is a protected person under the WADA Code and thus should be receiving the required support to compete free from suspicion."
However, the protection of minors was ignored. Lucien Valloni, a Swiss sports lawyer, said "This is now the consequence – that they have not informed correctly, they should not have informed at all... They should not have delayed the medals ceremony."
"When Lance Amstrong, Floyd Landis and other runners of the Tour de France have been tested positive to doping, we never heard so much noise and their cases were presented as 'errors' in their careers," says Guy Mettan. "So it seems to me that Russia is a good scapegoat, paying the highest toll for saving the reputation of a cleaner sport."
The unrightful capitalization on the 15-year-old's test sample in the media is a breach of ethics, and, possibly, could be taken to court.
