This is the third part of my effortposting series on 2022 Olympic figure skating drama. Please try to keep up by making sure you've read parts one and two.
We left off the story with the announcement that Kamila Valieva would be allowed to compete in the individual women's event despite failing a drug test. Everything is building up to the marquee event of figure skating and the Winter Olympics as a whole, the women's free skate. There are three Russian girls expected to sweep the podium, all students of the wicked witch Eteri Tutberidze. It's time to introduce them.
Dramatis Personae
Anna Shcherbakova
Anna can do quadruple jumps, including the relatively difficult quad lutz. At the last Olympics no woman had ever landed a quad, but this year all three Russians have quads in their arsenal. One of her greatest strengths is consistency. And all of the Russian skaters have a big advantage from the special favor they get from judges, who ignore minor mistakes, give bonus points to every jump, and give ridiculously high scores for the artistic composition of their programs. If Anna can just skate clean and not make any big mistakes, she has a very good chance of getting a bronze medal at least.
Alexandra Trusova
Alexandra has a very simple plan. Forget prancing around to the music and all the emotional bullshit. She's just going to go out there and do 5 quads. Heck, she doesn't even have to do them well. She can fall on her butt a couple times and she'll still rack up so many points it won't matter. And since she's Russian, she could spend half the program just standing there shooting up krokodil and most of the judges would still give her 9.75 points for program composition and interpretation. Barring something unusual happening, she won't be able to beat Valieva, but she seems to be almost assured of getting the silver.
Kamila Valieva
When doing a google image search, I typed in her name and the top suggestion was "Kamila Valieva bikini". Congratulations, pedos.
We all know Kamila by now. There's not much to say except that she's the best in the world. She can do it all. She can do those difficult jumps, she can put together a moving performance, and she can do it consistently. This girl just doesn't make mistakes. She is a national heroine and huge banners of her are flying all over Russia.
Events
First let's go over what we expect will happen. At this point we can be pretty sure of the outcome. Valieva will win and Trusova and Shcherbakova will get silver and bronze, probably in that order. The IOC has already said that it won't do a medal ceremony with Valieva in it, so there won't be one. When the doping investigation concludes some time long into the future, Valieva will be stripped of her title. The other two Russians will get gold and silver medals and bronze will go to someone else, probably Japan's Kaori Sakamoto.
In the short program, everything happens exactly as expected. The next night, it's time for the free skate. Everything still goes smoothly. The Russians pull off lots of incredible jumps and the judges inflate their scores. We have Shcherbakova in first place ahead of Trusova with only Valieva left to skate. This is the moment we've all been waiting for, where the doped up, abused child skater who shouldn't even be allowed to compete will awe everyone with a flawless reminder that she is the best in the world. And that's when things start melting down faster than a reddit moderator in an argument.
Valieva goes out on to the ice with a horrified look on her face. She starts skating and manages to land her first jump, but only just barely. Second jump she has to use her hands to keep from falling over. Third jump she falls on her butt. Fifth jump she falls hard. It's just really sad. She gets off the ice and the first thing she hears is Eteri telling her that she should have tried harder. She comes in 4th place and is just as devastated as you would expect, with nobody but Eteri and her minions to comfort her.
As she's being shuffled away, we see Trusova a few feet away screaming and crying. Shcherbakova, the gold medal winner, is left alone with a teddy bear looking confused and sad. Trusova, the silver medal winner, is yelling that she won't go to the podium. Eteri finally goes to Shcherbakova and uses this opportunity to neg her, saying that she should have done a triple axel. I guess winning a gold medal wasn't good enough. Kaori Sakamoto, the bronze medal winner, is bawling her eyes out in happiness. Trusova is absolutely livid about something and having it out with Eteri on camera.
Trusova is saying things like "I hate this sport, "I will never step on the ice again", "This is impossible", "leave me alone" while a bunch of coaches try to calm her down. One of them mentions that "she's been like this for 20 minutes" meaning it started when she finished her skate, before Valieva skated. She yells "You knew everything!" at Eteri. Finally she goes out to the podium to collect her panda and we get this image to remember the games by.
Analysis
So wtf just happened? Apparently Valieva just completely cracked under all of the pressure she was under and gave her worst performance ever. And Trusova was mad that she hadn't gotten the gold. In interviews later, she made it clear that her coaches had promised she'd get gold if she landed all five quads in her program. So it's just a couple of overwrought teenagers breaking down under all the pressure they've been put under. It's sad, but understandable.
But is that the whole story? It's time for us to put on our tin foil hats, smash the nearest 5G tower, and do a little thinking.
If Valieva just couldn't take the pressure of the media attention on her, why did she do just fine in the short program the night before? We expected that Valieva would win, there would be no medal ceremony, and she would never actually get the medal because she'd be disqualified for doping. Instead Valieva had a disastrous performance that was so bad she couldn't even take bronze. So there was a medal ceremony and gold and silver were given to Russians. Really convenient, isn't it? Did Valieva literally take a dive so that her teammates could win? I haven't found anyone mentioning this possibilty except for one article mentioning that this is what everyone in Russia believes happened.
It would also explain why Trusova was so upset. Remember, we went into this expecting that Valieva would get gold and Trusova would get silver. So why did she have a public breakdown over getting silver? And why did that breakdown begin before Valieva even skated? It makes a lot more sense if she knew ahead of time that Valieva was out of the picture.
Conclusion
It's been a wild ride, but apparently it's over now, unless something hectic and unexpected happens with the pairs skaters. As much as I love drama, I have to say this just left me feeling bad in the end. There can be plenty of scandals, catfights, and meltdowns in figure skating without destroying the lives of these little girls. So I hope some major reforms take place in the ISU, like dismantling the network of Russian-controlled judges, actually punishing Russian doping, and at the very least raising the minimum age of skaters.
Bronze medalist and 1st among skaters who aren't known to be doping, Kaori Sakamoto.
Links
Reddit actually had some good content about this:
Others:
The Skating Lesson talks to retired skater Polina Edmunds
about the women's event and she spills lots of tea about Russian doping and cheating in generalThe World Socialist Website
blames capitalist warmongers
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god darn, who tf scootered this? i'm tryin read here ...
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thank you captain oblivious
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ur welcome cpt'n stupid questions
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how about u go an dialate some more there
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if u'd stop sneeding
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but if u'd stop seething ...
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You shouldn’t be anywhere near this thread.
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and you just shouldn't be
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Die, chomo
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if only you had the intelligence to say anything interesting
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I have the perseverance and forthright manner necessary to say what needs to be said. You should not ever be around children.
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oh the irony in how little perseverance you actually have.
words are cheap my friend,
you absolutely can't back that up with the consideration required to convince me that your obsession with systematically enforcing virginity through abuse and violence, is anything more than a self-fulfilling cult.
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You can’t be convinced because chomos can’t be cured by anything other than the wood chipper.
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what a conveniently self-justifying excuse to make up for how little perseverance you actually have.
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The scooter is the most obnoxious and irritating thing and I hate it and love it at the same time.
Duck Marsey get out of the god darn way!
Oh look at how cute she is scooter go brrrrrrr!
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Shit posting aside its really fricked up that shit like this gets done to kids.
That being said dude Russians lol
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In these trying times kids really only have two options for the future
Drugs and nervous breakdown forced to chase their parents' dreams.
Obesity and transition.
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Ah yes that's another pipeline.
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Rarer than it's peddled to be.
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They made her a star. She should be thanking them.
Yours for Wild Nature
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A star at figure skating. That's like being the Yu-Gi-Oh state champion.
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Or on the rdrama.net leaderboards
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That's a fate worse than death.
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She’ll be star in russia and get roles in movie and be on tv and get a rich bf who is son of some billionaire.
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Her back is permanently fricked up though and she's only 22. Giving up your youth to Eteri and then being a crip for the rest of your life is a heck of a price to pay.
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Better 30 good years than a boring life
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I have literally no clue who that is. It's an irrelevant sport in an irrelevant country.
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She has 1,3 million followers and she is last Olympics winner and money are money and they are never irrelevant.
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I still have no idea who she is. Also there are r-slurs with that many followers so it's not that hard.
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Russian judges are kinos and we should learn from them.
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mod her now
reminds me of the boy here who got caught flipping the bird on TV
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She is unique looking her eyes shape make her look like a witch
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I've loved reading this series, thanks
@Redactor0. Stuff like this is exactly why I come to rdrama.
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Thanks fam.
I'm glad we have a community of high-brow intellectuals who can properly appreciate my work.
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Olympics are fun again since the Soviets are up to their old tricks and the Sinos are producing soulless robot athletes in factories. It's not enough to root for your own country, you need someone to actively root to fail
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No one can care this much about figure skating and be a straggot. You have been removed from the Straggot Watchlist.
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This is how happy I am to hear it.
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frick man the russians are cold fricking blooded
they didn't give a frick
"You are bourgeois failure. You are crying because you deserve to feel sad"
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That’s actually pure capitalism like why would you spend your time working out and then don’t win a gold medal ? I went to boxing because I wanted a medal to flex and it was easiest sport for me.
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The meritocracy known as Olympic judge panels
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Btw,
@Redactor0, do you maybe know the funny nickname that was given to some Warsaw Pact, most probably Eastern German, female athletes for the consequences of their testosterone abuse? I remember hearing it once but I can't bing it now because apparently respectable publications aren't interested in casual racism and misogyny somehow!
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Good question. I remember whenever you thought of East Germany, the roided up women was the first thing that came to mind, but I can't remember any particular nickname for them.
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It was something like "the deep voice squad" but actually funny.
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My dad’s joke for them was just a deep voiced “Helga take gold medal”
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This is the most dramatic thing I've read all day
Yours for Wild Nature
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Looking at the video I'd say she was made to take a dive more than anything
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What is the lesson here?
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Don't place your nation's hopes and dreams in the hands of a bunch of goddarn 15-year old girls.
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Wtf those Chinese cartoons lied to me.
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Olympics shouldn’t include arbitrary events that rely on scores by some gay judges. Also the losers should be ritually sacrificed like those Mayan foot basketball players.
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She's not much to look at, but I love Kaori for not cheating, and still managing bronze.
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I have really enjoyed these. Thank you.
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Who won the olympics
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Drama won!
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how many golds did marsey get?
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This one at least.
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This should have been a golden marsey
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Thanks for your hard work, but in the end women lmao
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Peaking at middle school sports
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Have you posted bussy yet?
Snapshots:
https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/kamila-valieva-5.jpg?quality=90&strip=all:
A translation of what Trusova was saying:
Kamila banners around Russia:
Chart of Eteri's girls expiring:
Noticing the middle finger:
The Skating Lesson talks to retired skater Polina Edmunds:
Literally who calling my theory "bizarre":
The World Socialist Website:
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Why do the judges favor Russians? Pretend I've touched grass before and know nothing about figure skating.
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Back in the Soviet era, all of the communist bloc countries were one big team. That may seem like ancient history, but look at who the judges are now. They're retired athletes and bureaucrats whose formative years were in the '80s. The Russians still have their tentacles wrapped around a lot of them who are from former Soviet republics or eastern Europe. So you've got judges who are nominally from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, or wherever but the Russians have been paying them off for their whole careers.
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Russia is the worst country on Earth and I hope Biden nukes us out of exitance.
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Japanese girl is ugly
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ur attitude is ugly
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My attitude is realistic. For this sport looks matter a lot. If I wanted to look at technique I would watch male figure skating.
Kamila is winner of this Olympics, before Olympics she had 700k Instagram followers and now almost 1 million. How much does that Japanese girl has ? Russian and Japanese population have similar size
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Beautiful effortposting
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Why do the Russian girls arms all look like they are plugged into to their bodies like a plastic action figure?
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