Kamila Valieva was inconsolable after errors cost her another medal in Beijing
(Picture: AFP via Getty Images)IOC president Thomas Bach says he was left disturbed by the “chilling” way a distraught Kamila Valieva was treated by her coach in the aftermath of the women’s figure skating.
The 15-year-old Russian fell twice to finish outside the medals in fourth place.
After she came off the ice, her coach Eteri Tutberidze shouted in Russian: “Why did you let it go? Explain it to me, why? Why did you stop fighting completely? Somewhere after the axel, you let it go.”
Speaking on Friday, Bach said: “I must say I was very, very disturbed when I watched the competition on TV when I afterwards saw how she was received by her closest entourage with what appeared to be tremendous coolness. It was chilling to see this.
“Rather than give her comfort, rather than trying to help her, you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance. If you were interpreting the body language, it got even worse. It was even dismissive.”
The figure skating and the Games more widely have been overshadowed by Valieva’s situation. It was revealed the day after the team figure skating competition that she had tested positive for a drug used to treat angina patients from a sample taken on Christmas Day.
She was provisionally suspended by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, but that was lifted on appeal and she was eventually given the all clear to compete by a Court of Arbitration for Sport panel sitting in Beijing.
Despite a mistake in the short program on Tuesday, she went into yesterday’s free skate in the lead but slipped out of the medals with an error-strewn display.
Valieva’s training partner Alexandra Trusova was also caught up in the controversy afterwards, shouting: “I will never go out on the ice again,” after finishing with the silver medal.
And Bach said: “I was pondering about this last night. How can you really be so cold to your athletes? When I saw and read how Trusova was being treated, when I read about her comments, I’m afraid that the impression I had last night was not the wrong one.
“All of this does not give me much confidence in the closest entourage of Kamila. Neither with regard to what happened in the past, nor as far as concerns the future, how to deal with and treat a minor athlete at the age of 15 under such obvious stress.
“How high the pressure on her must have been. To see her struggling on the ice, to see how she tries to compose herself again, how then she tries to finish her programme and you could see in every movement, in the body language, you could feel this is immense mental stress and maybe she would have preferred to just leave the ice and try to leave this story behind her.”
Bach said he hoped the investigation into Valieva’s entourage would bring “full clarity” over her doping case.
He added: “This is a 15-year-old girl who has a drug in her body that should not have been there. The ones that administered it to her, these are the people that are guilty.”
