I had not seen the actual Olympic performances before my last post, but I recorded them and just finished watching. So I'll make some closing remarks here.
I still blame the Russian coach, Eteri Tutberidze as the primary culprit in this mess, and I hope that she receives the blame that she deserves. It is possible that barbos is right that the drugs had no real value in giving the edge to the Russian athletes, but the problem is that the coaching team and those behind them felt that they did. That's why Valieva tested positive on a banned substance and was taking two other drugs that were untested but suspected of having similar beneficial effects. Russia has a history of state-supported doping of athletes, and they clearly have not made the progress that everyone expected. The IOC needs to do something about that--much more rigorous testing of at least Russian athletes. And they should downgrade the points that these figure skaters get for performing quads, not to mention raising the age of allowed competitors.
The two Russian skaters and Japanese bronze medalist who won were superb and ought to have enjoyed their medals, but they were all distraught after what happened to Valieva. I blame none of these athletes, because they had to do what they were told just in order to be in the games. The two Russian medalists who tested clean for drugs now had it hanging over their heads that maybe they just managed to avoid testing positive, but Valieva got caught. After all, they had the same coach and doctor. But that isn't fair. The gold medalist should have been overjoyed after she was announced the winner, but there was really nobody around to celebrate with her. She looked sad and lonely and went searching for people to hug. The silver medalist lost it completely, said she wouldn't go to the podium, hated the sport, and would never compete again. She felt that she had been deprived of the gold. The Japanese bronze medalist was also in tears. And all of these champions got their medals because Valieva, who was favored to win, took a number of spills. So they were supposed to get lesser medals but won theirs almost by default. Allowing Valyeva to compete tarnished everyone's medals, no matter what the outcome. And we could see Tutberidze looking angry and scolding Valyeva, a 15-year-old girl who needed someone to comfort her. It was a very sad day for the Olympics and for Russia.