Kamila Valieva, 15, cries hugging her stuffed rabbit as she receives the score that places her in fourth place in the competition outside the medal table.
In the end it became one of the most awkward and “hard to watch” sporting moments of recent times.
Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva, 15, who arrived at the Beijing 2022 Games as the biggest star of her team, left the ice rink this Thursday in tears, completely upset, after a presentation with mistakes and falls that left her out of the medal table
But history transcends the fourth place he got on the day. It all started a few days ago.
Praise and expressions of admiration for Valieva went around the world when in the first week of competition she achieved the most unexpected: a quadruple jump with which her team won the gold medal.
The feat made her the first skater to make that jump at an Olympics.
But shortly after that jump everything started to go wrong when it was revealed that the young skater had failed a doping test in December.
Kamila Valieva made several mistakes in her last presentation and fell twice.
He tested positive for trimetazidine, a drug used in the prevention of angina attacks included in the list of prohibited substances for improving physical efficiency.
Despite the controversy, and after a series of deliberations, Valieva was authorized to compete in the rest of the Games, which caused as much joy in some of her followers, as consternation of other organizations and Olympic athletes.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport cited his age as one of the reasons it made the decision. The World Anti-Doping Agency Wada said it was “disappointed” by the move.
She faltered early on in her routine and, with the eyes of the world upon her, fell on the ice after a series of mistakes. The small audience snorted in disbelief, while the sports commentators showed her empathy and her bewilderment.
“This is hard to watch,” said BBC commentator Katherine Downes.
“After his second mistake, it was like he was spinning as fast as he could,” former Olympic champion Jayne Torvill said afterward.
“It was like he just wanted to get it over with and get off the ice.”
Valieva has some of the most complex moves of her generation.
When her routine was over, the teenager cried uncontrollably and hugged her stuffed rabbit as she waited for the result.
The fourth place she achieved would probably have been an outstanding achievement for another athlete of her age and who was not subjected to the sporting pressure and controversy that the Russian faced in her time at Beijing 2022.
As BBC journalist Matthew Henry pointed out, Valieva’s performance on Thursday “became one of the most awkward moments in sport in recent memory.”
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