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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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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