On Tuesday, the field of sports information was inflamed by the words of Olympic rowing champion Sergei Fedorovtsev, who was disqualified for four years for finding trimetazidine in a doping sample. The same drug was found at the figure skating team tournament Kamila Valieva, the winner of the 2022 Olympics. In the suspicious silence around the doping case of student Eteri Tutberidze, it’s a scream. What can be hidden behind this silence – in the material of the correspondent of RIA Novosti Sport.

The latest news about Valieva’s doping case leaked to the information space in early May. American journalist Christine Brennan, who stormed the mixed zone at the Beijing Olympics, who did not let a single Russian skater go about the terrible cruelty of Camila, reported that hearings on the case of the Russian woman are unlikely, referring to the CAS press service. It will be done before August. However, this is also an extremely rough estimate.

Of course, due to uncertainty, in addition to Valieva, Russian figure skaters who won gold at the team tournament in Beijing and members of other teams, who were in no way involved in this story, did not see the Olympic medals. almost a year and a half, suffering in this state. If you think about it, this period is not that small, even on the scale of a human life – not just a sports career.

Yet nothing compares to the experiences Camila has had all this time. For obvious reasons, he speaks very little about it in the public domain – no room for emotion as long as it’s on the legal plane. But sometimes she can’t control herself. And then others want to cry no less than the skater himself.

By “what’s out there,” the Olympic champion means Beijing, where her life turned into a reality show overnight. But the period before the Olympics and the day that trimetazidine is in his body are much more important. RUSADA has been investigating the circumstances of the case for months—even a very long time—because WADA did not wait for its completion in November last year and turned the case over to CAS. And so far there are no hints of results.

Only RUSADA has the right to appeal against the decision of its own Disciplinary Anti-Doping Committee, which acknowledges that Valieva was not at fault or negligence in the violation. Frankly, the appeal is extremely strange – RUSADA, for some reason known only to him, demands to admit the skater as guilty, but to impose a minimum punishment on him – a warning. And this is that despite all the repeated arguments made in the WADA code, the responsibility of an athlete under the age of 16 for the content of the doping test is extremely limited and the main attention falls on the activities of his environment.

By the way, this is the key moment in this case. If there is reason to blame Valieva for having tested positive for doping at the age of 15, then it is necessary to explain why Eteri Tutberidze’s coaching staff or the doctors who work with the athlete do not do business. The silence here is far from under. Otherwise, a provocative thought scares: Are we really going to tear Kamila to pieces by WADA in exchange for Russia’s honorable coach continuing to bring medals to the country? Of course, when the country returns to the international arena.

The fact that the gloomy silence around the Valieva case was most likely not accidental was abruptly hinted at in a seemingly unrelated event on Tuesday – an incident that occurred at a business breakfast called “Sports under Restrictions.” The place was taken by the Olympic champion in rowing, Sergei Fedorovtsev, and he immediately ran right off the bat.

If the information about the dose of trimetazidine in Valieva’s example is not news, then the words that the figure skater underwent an additional examination for abnormal liver function are practically an information bomb. There is no need to question the words of the Olympic champion. She clearly knows what she’s talking about, as the investigation probably compared similar cases to the Valieva case, including her own. By the way, Fedorovtsev recalled that sleigher Nadezhda Sergeeva, who also had trimetazidine, had taken her from a contaminated drug prescribed for liver problems and taken from FMBA. He managed to prove it, and the disqualification period was at least eight months.

Returning to Fedorovtsev’s statements about Valieva: He would probably have added much more interesting things had it not been for three-time Olympic champion Alexander Karelin sitting next to him, and he snapped the speaker with the words “enough, not in the kitchen”. ” And unfortunately, this statement shows not a desire to comply with legal formalities and minimize comments on the subject, but rather an unwillingness to wash dirty linen in public. “It boiled down,” the Olympic champion in rowing admitted, and even dared to say a few more sentences after Karelin intervened.

And you can only imagine how Valieva boiled. Outwardly, he leads a completely normal lifestyle for an athlete. He is preparing for the new season, at the same time participating in various events, such as making a symbolic blow at a football match, popularizing athletics at the race on Nikolskaya, performing at ice shows … But all this is in one case where his own career is in the balance.

There are also difficulties in the case of Valieva, which would not have happened a year and a half ago. For example, as Sergey Alekseev, head of the sports law commission of the Russian Bar Association, said at the same business breakfast, our Swiss colleagues, who previously defended our interests at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, refuse to work with us after the case has begun. CBO. I would like to believe that in the current situation, Russian lawyers are taking Kamila’s case as seriously as possible. Because if in the end it turns out that he was abandoned in the same way as Fedorovtsev before, it would be a crime.

The opinion of the author may not coincide with the opinion of the editors.