Front Burner - Russia, figure skating and a doping scandal

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Russian prodigy Kamila Valieva made figure skating history last week, becoming the first woman to land a solo quadruple jump at the Olympics. In fact, Valieva landed two quadruple jumps as she led Russia to the women’s team gold. But just two days later, the medal ceremony for the event was suddenly delayed — and we’ve since learned that Valieva tested positive for a banned heart medication in December. The Court for Arbitration in Sport has now ruled Valieva can still compete in the women's individual event, but there will be no medal ceremony if she lands on the podium. Shortly before the ruling, we spoke to freelance journalist Gabby Paluch about how this case fits into a history of Russian doping, and about the story behind the notoriously tough coach that’s both making and breaking young stars like Valieva.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Pyeongchang, 2018. Figure skating legend Megan Duhamel is about to make history. Going for the throw quad, Selko. She becomes the first person to be thrown into a quad at the Olympics.

That's four spins in the air before landing on the ice. That moment, it came after really careful training. Training that had to be paced slowly, day by day. You know, when I skated and I was trying quads in pair skating, I was thrown into a quad. Like, we had the mental capacity and the physical capacity to try maybe three a day. Maybe with some performance enhancing drug, I could have tried eight or nine a day. Maybe, I don't know. I'm just like imagining.

So I think that that's more. Megan's just imagining this because another skater made history this month. Russian Kamila Valieva. She just became the first woman to land a solo quad jump at the Olympics. And this moment, it was really quickly tarnished when we learned that Valieva had tested positive for a banned heart medication in the lead up to the Games. There are fresh accusations of a failed drug test for one of that country's star athletes. Well, we received confirmation from the ITA,

that's the international testing agency, that Camilla Valieva did test positive for a banned substance. I don't think the reason she can do all these quads is necessarily from performance enhancing drugs, but I think it's just allowed her to train a little bit harder and a little bit more than maybe her body would have been able to take otherwise. This is happening after Russia was already punished for a state-sanctioned drug scandal in a whole bunch of sports a few years ago. drug scandal in a whole bunch of sports a few years ago. And it's complicated by the fact that Kamila Valieva is only 15. From what we understand and from what has been said about Russia's systematic doping issue and problem is that a lot of young athletes don't even know that they're being given

these things. And I've talked to Russian figure skaters and they've told me I'm just given vitamins and I just take my vitamins. And they don't they don't question it because they're just doing what they're told. So there is a certain level of who is responsible here. But whoever is responsible needs to be punished. So who is responsible exactly and what happens now? Freelance journalist Gabby Palooch is joining me to help piece that together. She's been working with Business Insider to look into the team of adults behind Camila

Valleva that critics have been eyeing for years. Hey, Gabby, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Jamie. Hi. So let's start here. Who is Camila Valieva? And can you help situate where she is in the skating world for me? Camila Valieva is the Russian national champion. She's 15 years old.

She started skating when she was three. She was born in Kazan. And the last two years, she has been dominating her discipline. She became junior world champion in 2020. She started landing her quads the year before that. The fact that she just landed the first quad at the Olympics as a woman is a remarkable achievement. It's taken 30 years for women to be able to do it since Surya Bonali first attempted it in 1992. And she's an exquisite skater in so many ways. She has beautiful qualities. She's flexible. There's that incredible extension that she has. She is so flexible. And it's unusual to see that much flexibility with that much strength.

Normally one is sacrificed for the other, not with her. Got a beautiful landing knee. Everything looks soft. But the athletic achievements have been described as superhuman. Performs the sort of jumps that make you think she is superhuman. And it's true. It's remarkable what she achieves. And it bends the mind. It looks like beyond what should be humanly possible. Yeah, yeah. And so since she landed these two quads atlympics during the team figure skating event which is sort of like this mix of single skaters and pairs and different competitions and they all are in

points toward this shared goal there there has been a lot of controversy uh swirling around her little bits of information have been leaking for the past week ever since the medal event was postponed and what do we know at this point as of Sunday afternoon about the accusations against Kamila Valieva? As of Sunday afternoon, we know that Kamila Valieva gave a tainted sample sometime around when she became Russian champion. So around December 25th. And that sample was sent by RUSADA, which is the Russian anti-doping agency, to a properly accredited lab in Stockholm because there are no properly accredited labs in Russia because they all lost their accreditation because of the previous doping scandal in 2014. The IOC says the team took part in a state-sponsored doping program during the Sochi Games in 2014. The World Anti-Doping Agency released a damning report on doping and corruption within the Russian Athletics Federation.

The report reveals widespread doping and cover-ups among Russian athletes in which the Russian government was complicit. And when the sample was tested, reports have said there was a COVID outbreak at the Stockholm lab, which delayed the results. to the ITA, the International Testing Authority, that was supposed to be taking care of testing for athletes that were going to Beijing, it didn't get communicated until after Camila had already performed in the event. So that's why we're in the pickle that we're in now. When the test emerged, RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency, automatically suspended Camila and then immediately lifted the suspension. They defended her and they haven't made their reasoning public, but we suspect there's some sort of temporary use exemption or other explanation as to why the drug was in her system, but may not count as having been a performance enhancing substance. It's a bit of a stretch given the drug that was found in her blood,

trimetazidine. For trimetazidine, a medication to treat chest pain, but banned because it can boost blood flow and stamina. It's used to boost oxygen levels in the body, so increase your heart output and being able to practice longer and harder and recover better. And it also has been shown, according to studies, that it can improve your reflexes and reaction time, which are coincidentally one of the most important things when you're trying to land a quad is you have to be really fast, have really good reflexes and land things on a tiny blade. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, just to be clear, this substance, trimetazidine, it is banned. It's a banned substance. Yeah. I understand there is this legal issue at play with the fact that she is a minor. She's under 16.

And so can you explain to me what's going on with that? Because Camila Valleva is under 16, she has protected status under WADA's rules. So the World Anti-Doping Agency doesn't identify people under the age of 16 by name if they've had a doping violation. Unfortunately, because Camila is the only person under the age of 16 on the team, it sort of identified her by default. So the International Testing Authority was sort of forced to identify her by name. But I think what's more important here is that Camila Valieva is a minor and she's 15, which means that there's no way she could possibly bear responsibility for having taken these drugs.

And I guess the question here that might arise is, can somebody who's too young to take responsibility to dope, can that person still be considered to be doping? Something I didn't know was that WADA has a rule in place for athletes under the age of 16 and how responsible they are for what's in their body. And I didn't know that there was a difference. To me, if somebody is a minor, it should be more important that they're staying clean for their own health purposes, not for performance enhancing purposes, but their own health. These are still children. So I'm very surprised to see

like the reverse that it's less serious when you're a child connected to that then a lot of reaction i saw online emphasize that that she's a product of her training environment that they're the people around her are the ones making the decisions for her, in particular her coach, Eteri Tutberidze. And what is Eteri's story? Can you tell me how she factors into this? Eteri Tutberidze has become a legend in the last four years. A true cult of personality has emerged surrounding this coach. Well, thank you for everything you've done for the sport.

Thank you for taking the time to speak to me, because to be honest, you scare me. I scare myself too sometimes. No, but I'm so happy to know you have this tremendous emotion and passion inside of you. She's been named Coach of the Year. She's won every single gold medal that you can imagine. Her students have been sweeping podiums. She came up in skating schools in the 80s in Moscow that were infamously competitive and had infamously abusive training environments. She had injuries and her career as a competitor was cut short by a growth spurt.

Really similar story to her own skaters, in fact. She eventually switched to ice dance and then signed up for a 36MCA across the street when the bomb went off, you know, during the Oklahoma City bombing. Wow. In 1995. Yeah. After this experience, Terry was basically forced into coaching out of necessity in order to pay her bills. And originally her students weren't particularly ambitious. She was in San Antonio in the US and she moved back to Moscow in search of more ambitious students.

She wanted to win. And she was able to do that once she found her school, Sambo 70, where she was given generous support by the Russian Figure Skating Federation. You know, she was assigned a team doctor to help her and she was supported within her federation financially. So once she was in a place where she was able to really be the master of her own domain, she started producing champions. We talked to Olympic medalist and CBC sports analyst Megan Duhamel, and she said Camille's coach has a reputation for things like weighing her skaters, telling them not to drink water, limiting their food. Not to drink water, limiting their food.

Reading that, it's like, whoa, big red flags. But then the ISU, the figure skating's governing body, international governing body, is naming this coach Coach of the Year last year. And so what do coaches and fans say about these techniques? Some of Eteri Tutberidze's techniques are not that unusual. It's really not that unusual to weigh yourself or to watch your diet when you're an athlete. However, the degree to which Eteri Tutberidze does these things in her school is really worrisome. In some situations, we know her students who are world-class athletes and need to be eating and drinking water. You know, we know Alina Zagitova, after her gold medal winning Olympic performance in Pyeongchang,

she was so dehydrated that she was unable to pee for several hours in order to give a sample to the testing authority. Wow. That's really alarming. There's been some other really alarming things that have surfaced about what goes on behind closed doors at Eteri Tutberidze's rink. In one case, Eteri Tutberidze had released a video of one of her students landing a difficult quadruple combination. And in the background, you could see another student being physically thrown across the ice by another coach. So there's a lot of extremely unusually abusive behavior that goes on in that link. Some other reports have emerged. rink. Some other reports have emerged. Former students of Tupiriza have said that she's verbally abusive and says sexually explicit things to her very young skaters on the ice to insult

them. So the abuse and the extent of the abuse that's happening at Tupiriza's rink, we really don't know the full extent of what's happening. Do you limit the number of attempts? Yes, yes. And then I see the, you know, like legs getting tired, not pushing so much. Then I'm like, OK, that's enough. I know there's something fans call the Eteri expiration date. What's that about? The Eteri expiration date is a phenomenon that we've seen crop up in the past couple years, which is mysteriously her skaters who are virtuosic, incredibly successful at competitions. They fight through injuries to, you know, put down these amazing performances. But then it looks like as soon as they hit 17,

they dramatically burn out. Their injuries catch up to them. They can no longer perform in competition and their diminishing results forces them to retire. And we can name countless examples. Polina Shalapin, Yulia Lipnitskaya, who was the 2014 Olympic champion in the team event, Alina Zagitova, Evgenia Medvedeva, the two Olympic medalists who were Tukburidze students in 2018 in Pyeongchang, both of them have retired with injuries since then. And even more disturbing, even though Eteri Tukburidze managed to show up at these Olympics with three girls who were able to do quads, there were several, several athletes who were left home, left behind in Moscow because they had broken bones. So for every successful skater who made it to the Olympics, there were at least two who had broken bones and who didn't make it at home.

Does she have supporters, this coach? What do they say about her? Eteri Tutberidze is revered and reviled in equal measures. She was awarded by Vladimir Putin after her contribution to the 2018 Olympic medal. She was awarded the Medal of Honor. In some cases, Russian sports fans have even asked the national soccer team to take Eteri Chudberidze on as a coach so she can whip the soccer team into shape. But we've started to see the cracks show.

At the last Russian national championship where Kamila Valieva became champion, Eteri Tutberidze's daughter, Diana Davis, miraculously came in second in the ice dance category. And fans were so upset that she had been overscored that they started booing Eteri Tutberidze at the competition at the board. So even though Eteri Tutberidze has been massively successful, people have started to resent her ambition and the way she has wielded her influence to achieve her goals. Other coaches, such as Evgeny Plushenko, who himself is an Olympic champion and runs a school that competes against her school, has long criticized her and her training methods. So even within Russia, she has detractors. What does she say or has she responded to all of these criticisms? Because we should know that in

your story, you point out that up until this point, none of Tuporica's athletes had ever had an adverse test result, right? And they do get tested a lot. Eteri Tuporitsa's students are tested basically more than any other skater in the ISU for two reasons. Because they're Russian, and as a condition of Russia's participation in the Olympics, they had to agree to be tested more than other athletes. But also because her students win so many medals. And when you win so many medals, you're included in a special testing pool. So it's true that her students have never had an adverse test result. However, this is definitely not the first time that there have

been doping rumors about Eteri Tutberidze. In 2019, a competitor named Anastasia Shabotova, who at the time was just 13 years old, had placed 14th at the Russian National Championships in the junior division. After she did an Instagram live Q&A, and when people asked her how she was able to train so well and what her secret was, she said, the right kind of doping. And then she said, at Tutberidze's camp at that school, that's what they all do. Of course they do it. They all drink the doping that their coaches tell them to take. In response, RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency, protected Tutberidze. Anastasia Shabutova

was bullied online. And within a couple months, she was released by the Russian Federation, and she will be representing Ukraine in Beijing at the Olympics in the women's event. So Anastasia Shabutova will be competing against Kamila Valieva in the team event, and she will be competing against Biritsa's students this week. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about

money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. And the Russians have announced that they're going to fight to defend the gold medal that they say she rightfully earned, noting that all of her Olympic tests for substances, those have all been negative. Eteri Tutberidze addressed those doping rumors in a widely televised interview with broadcaster Vladimir

Posner. And one of the things that she said that was really alarming is she defended her right to use medications that help her students in their recovery. I guess that brings us to the larger picture here, which I just I do do want to touch on, because the Russian team is no stranger to accusations like this, right? As you mentioned, that is why they're competing as the Russian Olympic Committee in these games. It's a way to penalize them for previous doping scandals investigated in 2015. And can you walk me through briefly what happened there? me through briefly what happened there. At the Olympics in 2014 in Sochi, the Russian anti-doping agency, Rusada, set up a special lab where they actually traded samples through a hole in the wall in order to protect athletes who had been doping. After that, there was an investigation into the broader state apparatus that had been protecting these athletes from failing drug tests.

And RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency that had been protecting these athletes, was found to continue doing what they had been doing before in slightly different ways, even as they were being sanctioned. So as recently as last year, the Russian anti-doping agency was sanctioned again for covering up adverse results. So even after this massive investigation and the scandal in 2014, as we've been allowing Russia to keep participating in the Olympics, the Russian anti-doping agency has continued to do what they were doing before. You know, Canadian IOC member Dick Pound actually just said it might be time for Russia to take a timeout from the Games, that they could sit out from one to three Olympics while they get help cleaning up these programs. And how has the Russian side reacted since this latest scandal?

State Duma representative and Olympic gold medalist Irina Rodnina has said that the world is hunting our girls. In other words, because the world is unable to accept that Russian girls are just superior at figure skating, we're trying to find excuses for why the rest of the world can't keep up. So I want to end this conversation by talking about what's next here. The Court of Arbitration for Sport held a hearing about Valieva's positive drug test yesterday, and we're expecting to see a ruling about what sanctions that she could face

on Monday afternoon. Depending on what the court decides, what can we expect to see happen in skating in the coming days? So Rusada has already announced that they intend to investigate Eteri Tukberidze and her entourage. I think given Rusada's already announced that they intend to investigate Eteri Tutberidze and her entourage. I think given Rusada's past investigations, we can expect that that investigation will

probably not yield too many changes. The International Skating Union should probably reflect on the accreditation of the people involved with Tutberidze's team. But it's unlikely that that will happen, given that one of the most powerful ranking members in the ISU, Renat Laishaev, is a Russian. And then in terms of USADA, so the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, recently passed legislation in the United States,

anti-doping agency, recently passed legislation in the United States actually makes Eteri Tutberidze vulnerable to prosecution because it affected, you know, the meddling chances of U.S. athletes. So depending on how things shake out, we could see a grand total of nothing happen, or we could see Eteri Tutberidze face the strongest sanctions all the way to, you know, potential criminal charges in the United States. Okay. And do you think it's, is it going to force some sort of reckoning? It really should. The sport of figure skating has been changed forever by Eteri Tutberidze and by her school. For years, people who were not Eteri Tutberidze's student couldn't win gold medals. So if you take away these competitors, it opens up the field for other people to skate in a more human way as opposed to a superhuman way.

Okay. Gabby, this was so interesting. Thank you so much for this. Thank you. Have a great day. All right. So before we go today, we asked Megan what she thinks needs to change in the sport. And she said that more athletes need to speak up when something's not right. And I think sometimes athletes are a little bit scared to talk about these type of controversial subjects, especially if they're competing and it's a judge sport. I understand. I was always told so much when I was competing, just don't say anything. Oh, Megan, please don't say anything. Please don't post anything on social media. The number of times I was told that, just be quiet. But the thing is, when everybody's quiet is that change doesn't happen. And I think that we need people to speak up for this because right

now there's a bunch of skaters from America and from Japan that have won a medal in that team event and they're not getting their medal ceremony. Will they even get a medal ceremony because of all of this? They have lost their Olympic moment and it has nothing to do with what they've done. And then there's also the skaters from Canada that are waiting to find out if they will be upgraded to a medal. And it's not fair to them either. Early Monday morning, we did get a ruling from the Court of Arbitration in Sport for Valleva. This ruling didn't decide on medals for the team event, where there is some possibility Canada could get bumped to a bronze.

That decision will come later. For now, the court cleared Vallejeva to skate in the women's individual event this week, where she's strongly favored to win. The court ruled in her favor in part because she's a minor and said preventing her from competing would cause her irreparable harm. But since full investigations of this doping case are coming, no medal ceremonies will be held for the team or solo events if she lands on the podium, which means not just Vallejeva, but no athletes are likely to get medals in these events until this situation is cleared up. The Canadian Olympic Committee says the decision on Vallejeva is

extremely unfortunate and sad for the athletes. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.