Her last public appearance remained as one of the images from the Beijing 2022 Winter Games. The image of a young girl in tears, leaving the Olympic rink without a word to the media, after a catastrophic performance in the program free of the women's figure skating event. Victory held out its arms to him. She let it slip.
A month and a handful of days after her fourth place at the Beijing Games, Kamila Valieva found the competitive atmosphere again. A less hostile atmosphere, in front of an audience more committed to its cause, in its own country.
The young Russian skater, who will celebrate her 16th birthday next month, competed during the last weekend in her first competition since the Beijing Games and the doping affair which shook her Olympic experience to the point of breaking her. She competed in a team competition, the Channel One Cup, in Saransk, Mordovia.
The competition had been rescheduled by the Russian Skating Federation to coincide with the dates of the world championships, played last week in Montpellier, in the south of France. An opportunity for Russian skaters, excluded from the Worlds by the ISU in reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, to perform on the ice despite their isolation from the international sporting movement.
After a simplified but impeccable short program, completed in first place on Saturday March 26, Kamila Valieva regained part of her skating the next day in the free. She took second place, with 173,88 points, behind her training partner, Anna Shcherbakova, crowned at the Beijing Winter Games (176,12 points).
Unlike the last Winter Games, Kamila Valieva did not try to escape the media. She confided her happiness at being on the ice. “ I am very happy, she explained after her performance. Glad the Channel One Cup took place. Spectators give you energy when you are tired. You continue to move forward thanks to them"
A closed parenthesis? Not yet. Certainly, the young Russian seems to have left behind the torments of her doping affair at the Beijing Games. But his case is not yet resolved. It should not be for several months.
To date, Kamila Valieva is not suspended by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA). She can therefore compete, even if the exclusion of Russia forces her to content herself with national events, at least until the end of the current year.
But according to the regulations of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), RUSADA has six months to make a decision on her case, from the moment it was informed of the positive test suffered by the young girl last December at the championships. from Russia. Six months from February 8, 2022, i.e. not before the beginning of August.
But RUSADA's decision will surely not put an end to the most publicized affair of the Beijing Winter Games, especially if it is favorable to the young skater. The other parties involved, including WADA, the IOC and the ISU, will still need to agree on what to do next. And, at the very end of the procedure, deliver a definitive result for the Olympic figure skating team event.
The ranking is always put in parentheses, with an asterisk meaning that the competition podium – Russian Olympic Committee, United States, Japan – remains provisional. The Americans may therefore have to wait until next year, a year after the competition, before possibly recovering an Olympic gold medal which has never left its box.
