The Winter Olympic figure skating arena is comparable to a big drama of ups and downs.
This year, two figure skating "geniuses" who had high hopes for gold were unfortunately placed in fourth place. If everyone has admiration for the self-challenging Yusuke, then around the fourth place in women's figure skating, Camilla Vallieva, there is more doubt and controversy.
The fifteen-year-old Russian teenager was caught in a drug test storm before the game, and many falls and mistakes in the free skating competition also made many people lament the fall of this talented girl.
At this year's Winter Olympics, three Russian figure skaters came in a group, not only for the Olympic gold medal, they were also jokingly called "three sets of dolls", harvesting a large number of fans on social networks.
Russian matryoshka doll combination
Vallieva, nicknamed K Bao, is the one who is most likely to win gold before the game.
Among the three women's singles players in this competition, K Bao is the youngest, born in 2006, and is not yet sixteen years old. Although he is young, he is very strong. She became famous at an early age, in recent years, she has shown extraordinary talent, whether it is technology, or artistic performance, are impeccable, valuable is that even the mentality is very stable, in the face of various international competitions can always play stable, so she is known as a "hexagon warrior".
Camilla Vallieva
The score of figure skating consists of two items: technical TES + program content is divided into PCS.
Compared with the other two women's singles players: Sasha (Trusova) although the technology is super strong, can jump 5 around the jump when free skating, but because the style is strong and not favored by the referee, there is no advantage in P points (artistic performance points); more feminine Qianjin (Sherbakova), refereeing edge and technical difficulty, but the state is not stable enough; compared with them, the impeccable K Bao has always been considered to be the number one seed player in Russia to impact the women's figure skating gold medal.
According to the conventional script, the Russian sanwa should have won three gold, silver and bronze items and stood on the podium together. But things have gone wrong since last December.
At that time, K Bao was tested for Russian anti-doping drugs, and found that trimetazin was positive, and the Russian side lifted the ban after her temporary ban and restored her qualification to play in the Winter Olympics - this matter, no one in Russia said anything, and the International Olympic Organizing Committee did not know.
The International Olympic Organizing Committee at the scene of the Winter Olympic Games, until 2 hours before the K Bao team match women's single skating appearance did not learn of this news, in order to the fairness of the game, the International Olympic Organizing Committee immediately filed a complaint, the International Court of Arbitration for Sport finally decided to let K Bao continue to play, but suspended the relevant awards, and then pushed forward after the results of the Olympic investigation.
The international court of arbitration for sport gave the consideration that Valieva was only a minor, and that the positive test result was only a test last December, and that the test results during the Winter Olympics were not abnormal, not to mention that they believed that the incident was not the athlete's fault, so she should not bear the consequences.
But the drug testing storm caused an uproar: Russia has a consistent doping scandal, after Russian coaches have publicly admitted to the use of doping in the team. The participation in the roc (Russian Olympic Committee) was also due to Russia's punishment by the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency.
On the other hand, the drug trimetazidine has not only long been listed as a stimulant banned drug (Sun Yang's 2014 drug ban storm involves trimetazidine), but there is no precedent for adolescent use. In other words, no doctor would prescribe trimetazide to 15-year-old Vallieva, so the rationale for treating the disease simply doesn't stand. The explanation given by K Bao at present is that her grandfather has been taking this drug for a long time, possibly through her grandfather's drinking cup into her body.
Although it was possible to continue the competition, the drug test storm still greatly hit K Bao, who was originally ahead of the second place in the team break, but made successive mistakes in the free skate, and finally only won the fourth place, regrettably tearful on the scene.
There is more than one heartbroken women's singles figure skater.
At the women's figure skating scene of the Beijing Winter Olympics, a drama that could not be made up by a TV series was staged for ten minutes:
The first seeded player Vallieva collapsed after the mistake, crying several times off the field; runner-up Trusova was proud of the performance, the free skating score was far ahead, but the final score (plus the short program) was still second, so she also cried bitterly and refused to go to the podium; the champion Sherbakova, who should have been praised by the stars, was ignored and lonely hugged her doll Cub.
Trussova cried into tears after the game
Even the well-informed NBC commentator said: I have never seen such a scene.
Compared with K Bao, Trusova is another kind of collapse: her skills are unmatched in the whole field, but ISU's referees have a set of subjective standards in scoring - male players are more interested in technology, and female players are more american. So even though Trusova was the world's first women's singles player to jump 5 around the world in free skating, her score was still inferior to that of a men's singles player with the same skill.
That's why she cried out from the field: I hate figure skating, I hate this sport.
Trusova: I hate the sport, everybody has a gold medal, I don't.
Maybe you have to say that at the age of 17, she can continue to compete and win the world championship at the next Olympic Games. But the cruel thing is that they probably won't have a chance to participate in the next Olympics.
Russian figure skating is really too rolled.
Why is the average age of the contestants only 17 years old? Because women's figure skating is an extremely challenging sport. Girls are lighter in body, so that they can jump, spin, and fall on the ice more freely (these are all T-points);
And every girl player in the process of growing up, to face a "development barrier" - once their body development, the coordination of movements has a greater challenge. As the weight increases, the greater the inertia during rotation, and the difficulty of the movement transformation also increases.
In order to maintain their performance, many female figure skaters diet for many years, and some athletes also suffered from anorexia after retiring. In the Olympic games, many athletes can't even drink a sip of water in order to reduce their weight.
But in figure skating-rich Russia, adult female athletes are not so easy to play - in any case, the developing adults can not be lighter and more beautiful than the young girls. This is also the reason why Russian figure skating is called a girl's factory, every year Russia will select young figure skating women's singles newcomers with excellent results, most of the "older" female players, no one has ever been interested.
Figure skating champion Zagitova of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, for example, was a grand slam figure skater but retired early the following year, when she was only 17 years old. Two-time world champion Medvedeva, who is well known on social networks, also faded out of figure skating after finishing runners-up at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, less than 20 years old.
For 17-year-old Trussova, who won the Olympic ticket but failed to win the Olympic gold medal that may be the only one in her life because of subjective factors, it is not cruel.
Even 15-year-old K Bao, I am afraid that I will not have the opportunity to participate in the next Olympic Games. One theory is that the Waterloo when she was free to slide was Russia's strategy for the sake of the big picture. This should also be wrong, after all, after her game, their coach, Ethri Tu Utritori, nicknamed Sister Face, was photographed scolding her harshly: Why did this mistake occur.
Etri Tu Especially Rize
The iron-blooded coach herself is a roll king, although she contributed to the rapid growth of Russian women's figure skating, supporting female athletes to challenge the four-way jump, but also opened the Russian women's figure skating training mode.
The Internet has documented multiple departures of the coach's athletes.
Medvedeva announced a change of coach in 2018, when she said she wanted to change the environment and let herself grow. In an interview, Tutezer said that she was texted after the Winter Olympics, but did not hear back from Medvedeva.
Athletes such as Daria Pannakova, Anastasia Tarakánova, Polina Chulskaya, Alyona Kanisheva and others announced their departure from Tuśrize in 2018, all claiming they could not stand the harsh training and dietary schedules.
In May 2020, Trusova announced a change of coach, saying that she could not stand the unfair treatment of coaches to different players and left.
However, Tu special Lize's devilish training method is also quite effective, and many athletes have returned to her after leaving, and some athletes have the conditions to return, and they are even required not to be absent from every training.
In the K Bao drug test incident, the coach has also been criticized countless times, after all, even if it is intentional to take drugs to improve her performance, this cannot be the active choice of a 15-year-old ignorant girl, and the Russian figure skating team and coach who accompanied her should take more responsibility.
The lack of female coaches was even named by IOC President Bach, who believed that K-Po's team, staff and coaches were too indifferent. "Banned drugs should not appear in her body, and only those who put drugs in his body are guilty."
The Russians are also scolding female coaches, brushing #Shame Tusitre rizer on Twitter trends.
But in Russia, figure skating geniuses appear one by one and disappear one by one, not just the fault of the female coach. Competitive sports is not only a sport, but also a system, every year in Russian figure skating there will be a new "Etri girl" appearing, another "girl" will retire.
The same figure skating country, Japan is much better, their female players can skate for a long time:
Arakawa Shizuka was 24 years old when she won the Olympic gold medal, Akiko Suzuki was 24 years old when she played for the Olympics for the first time, Anda Masayoshi retired at the age of 26, and won the Saitama Figure Skating World Championships at the age of 24.
Japanese player Hanori Sakamoto, who won the bronze medal in women's figure skating at the Winter Olympics, is 22 years old, not only is he a trumpet larger than the Russian players, and his action technology is far inferior to several babies, but he still won the third place with excellent and stable play, becoming the happiest player in the whole field.
Of course, the problems brought by the inner volume to Russian and Austrian athletes have also appeared in athletes in many countries, and many people have questioned this.
For example, the female athletes in figure skating are 15 years old, and the young people the audience sees on TV are actually minors and children in reality, and on the issue of doping, the athletes themselves will not be prosecuted like adults, but some media believe that if this cannot protect them, then why should the age of appearance be so low?
In fact, behind the sports arena we see, behind the thrilling suspense rebirth, it is also a place where athletes play cruel games. Behind the various controversies, there is no easy and simple answer.
Written by: tt, Jonas
Edit: Sebastian
Image from Visual China