Collects all the houses in Navka. How did Valieva survive the humiliation of the Olympics?

Although for Russians the prospects for the season in figure skating are more uncertain than all Murmansk and the Faroe Islands combined, our skaters tour not resorts in Russia, but resorts as part of ice shows. They are in demand everywhere, but few can compare with the full house in “Scarlet Flower” in Sochi. Perhaps the main reason is that the organizer Tatyana Navka managed to sign Kamila Valieva for the role of Nastenka.

It is interesting to understand such a phenomenon of public interest, because in fact, the last season of Valieva came out of the category of “fall out of love and forget it”. The Beijing Olympics, which was supposed to glorify the 15-year-old figure skater, turned into a nightmare. Afterwards we all pinched ourselves long and unsuccessfully hoping to wake up, but nothing helped – Valieva’s December doping test still found trimetazidine, yet they didn’t want to let her into her individual singles tournament and team gold. The Russian team was still “Schrödinger’s gold” – it seemed to exist, but they were not going to deliver it to us, and so far they have not.

I remember very well my feelings about Camila’s performance at the Grand Prix stage in Sochi four months before the Olympics. If there was an unstoppable item, Valieva looked like just such an item. A whirlwind on a butterfly’s wing, a tsunami on a lotus leaf, a graceful murderer of authority. She made every leap and turn with unimaginable ease. They talked about him with a sigh. The world stretched out its arms towards him, the “plus five” button on the bonuses for the elements sank to the judges, and the “10.00” button on the components was about to stick. Somewhere a medal was being thrown for Valieva, and it was embarrassing to shudder to realize that with all the genius of Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova, there is almost no Olympic gold chance with such Kamila.

At first in Beijing, she was the favorite girl of the whole country and, apparently, the whole world. She was entrusted alone to represent the women’s single skating at the team tournament, leaving both Sasha Trusova and Anya Shcherbakova out of the Russian team. Valieva coped with admiration and bathed, and we froze in anticipation of her personal singles tournament. Sasha and Anya failed in their training, cried and beat the sides. Are we really going to be two-time Olympic champions at these Games? Is the red color on the “Bolero” overalls a victory sign that really works?

But abandoned under her sweater by all responsible adults, Camila burst into the locker room in a shower of questions, and an exuberant gasp turned into regretful sighs. It was her first training session as an athlete with a positive doping test. Against the element of perfection that Valieva personified, the only element that could destroy her rose – a landslide of public disappointment.

Its appearance can also be explained: doping is not considered a good thing in any coordinate system of society. Camila removed the darkest stain possible with trimetazidine. Maybe if She had shot a bird with a slingshot or cursed her grandmother on the subway in front of the whole world, even that would have looked less bleak than the doping scandal in a TV series backdrop. among world records. Therefore, the pressure on a 15-year-old boy without a stock of thick skin, achieved only by the experience and understanding of defeat, was unbearable.

Camila could not and could not cope. That’s for the best – assuming the WADA case didn’t end in the skater’s favour, he would have to give up the Olympic medal he won, lose his title, and resurface from the rubble of a landslide that nearly killed him. Once upon a time. In that case, fourth place in the Games seems like a pretty good scenario.

To be honest, I was scared for Camila after the free program in the individual tournament. He was at the bottom and no one around seemed to care about him. There was not a single person who could support the girl on the most terrible day of her life (at that time it was possible to put an equal sign between life and career), but she could not cope alone.

But fortunately, I was afraid in vain. Camila was nowhere left alone, supported by her teammates and turned out to be much stronger than we thought, not just among the skaters. It’s simple: a hurricane cannot appear on a weak butterfly’s wing, and a water lily rests on stems so strong that no tsunami can break it. Camila returned home with a shield, not a shield, and continued to live. He hasn’t given any interviews yet, so there’s no way to find out from the cliff what thoughts and inner efforts are building the bridge to normal life.

It is not yet clear what will happen to her career now. WADA’s investigation of trimetazidine is ongoing and the sentence is very likely to be delayed. At the same time, the entire Russian team is indefinitely suspended from participation in international competitions, so Kamila seems to be on an equal footing with everyone. I want to believe that one day we will see the birth of a hurricane – in the performance of Valieva it is hypnotically beautiful and not at all dangerous. Still, one wrinkled adult season is brutally small for the skater of his talent.

The author’s view may not coincide with the editors’ position.