The pain of those waiting for medals stolen by doping – 09/29/2023 – Marina Izidro

If you like watching figure skating on ice – usually during the Winter Olympics, when it is shown on television –, you may remember the scandal involving Russian teenager Kamila Valieva in 2022. More than a year and a half later, athletes involved in the case still wait for a solution.

At the age of 15, the sports prodigy was the first on the planet to complete a quadruple jump at the Olympics, at the 2022 Beijing Games, and helped her country win team gold. The following day, it was revealed that Valieva had tested positive weeks earlier for trimetazidine, a substance used to treat chest pain and banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).

As a minor under 16, she was considered a “protected person” by Wada, but the International Olympic Committee decided that no one would win the medals until everything was clarified. She was able to compete in the individual event – ​​under pressure, she fell, left crying and finished in fourth place.

This week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), based in Switzerland, began hearing those involved. However, the panel requested new documents and the hearing was suspended until November.

Wada wants Valieva banned for four years, and Russia would certainly lose the medal. Remembering that the Russians competed in the Winter Games as neutrals, punished for another systematic doping scandal. If CAS says Valieva is guilty, the gold goes to the United States, the silver to Japan and the bronze to Canada. The decision may only be made in 2024.

It is not the first nor will it be the last story of what is the saddest side of sport. Many clean athletes have been denied the most important moment of their careers: the celebration of their achievement on the podium. There is nothing that can replace the privilege of winning an Olympic medal and hearing your country’s anthem.

Very young athletes, like Valieva, are also potential victims, because most do not have the maturity to challenge decisions made by medical teams and end up being part of a dirty and dishonest system.

In 2017, I did a report for Sport Espetacular that was touching for me. We show how Brazil’s women’s 4x100m relay team at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games received bronze for the third place they inherited in the race after Russia was disqualified for doping. They only won the medal nine years later. In 2019, it was the Brazilian men’s relay team’s turn to win bronze, due to doping by champion Jamaica. One of the athletes, Sandro Viana, described the moment as “having a child and only meeting him 11 years later”.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard in Olympic circles that says “doping is always ahead of anti-doping.” Cruel, and realistic. One of the Americans on the figure skating team that won silver in the Valieva race said this week that the global anti-doping system is “failing athletes“. The empty medal boxes are on display at the United States Olympic museum.

Every time a doped competitor takes away their rightful place on the podium from another, there is immeasurable emotional and economic damage. The photo of an athlete with an Olympic medal on his chest is a sponsors dream.

I’m not an expert on doping, but I hope that world sports authorities are thinking about how to speed up trials in cases like Valieva’s, the relays, and many others, and how to improve systems and rules. Justice that takes too long ends up failing.

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