I don't actually follow ice skating
Feb. 12th, 2022 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleBut an editorial about it still caught my attention yesterday. Apparently, a young skater was
disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs, and a lot of people on twitter are upset about it for reasons that resonate with me. The skater is very young, and it seems likely her coaches are abusing her. The drug found in her bloodstream was a heart medication she may have been taking because of an eating disorder and not known it was banned in the sport. The testing lab did not follow the usual procedures so maybe the whole thing is some kind of mistake or fraud.
Or there's this columnist, who says she skated so very well she can't possibly have taken any performance-enhancing drugs. WTF? First paragraph, for those who don't want to deal with the WP paywall:
The criminalizing of 15-year-old virtuoso Kamila Valieva is the moral disaster that the pseudo-puritan twistos of the anti-doping movement have been asking for all these years, with their “zero tolerance.” It has led to the damning of an innocent. Watch Valieva, just watch her. Discern anything in her performances but unhurried grace and pure greatness.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/02/11/sally-jenkins-valieva-anti-doping/
I have not paid much attention to ice skating in a very long time. I left the sport more than 40 years ago, when I gave myself concussion in that awkward interval between being able to land a double salchow and being able to land it WELL. I was not brave enough to keep trying. I haven't looked back very often...just noticed how younger and younger girls seem to be winning Olympics with higher and sloppier jumps. I haven't even seen this Kamila Valieva skate.
But I know I've never heard anyone say a runner or cyclist or swimmer obviously can't be taking performance-enhancing drugs, because they're so great and go so fast. Among my people, the discourse around performance enhancing drugs (on the rare occasions it comes up at all) has to do with disability or gender; ie, if they let asthmatics take steroids to bring their bodies to a "healthy" or "proper" baseline, why not also let athletes with ADHD take meds so they can focus, or let trans athletes take hormones--oh. I get it. I don't like what Jenkins is saying, but I suspect her approximate intent is:
"In their overzealous efforts to ban steroids, the IOC is attacking this innocent child who is obviously so delicate and femme she can't possibly be using steroids."
disqualified for using performance-enhancing drugs, and a lot of people on twitter are upset about it for reasons that resonate with me. The skater is very young, and it seems likely her coaches are abusing her. The drug found in her bloodstream was a heart medication she may have been taking because of an eating disorder and not known it was banned in the sport. The testing lab did not follow the usual procedures so maybe the whole thing is some kind of mistake or fraud.
Or there's this columnist, who says she skated so very well she can't possibly have taken any performance-enhancing drugs. WTF? First paragraph, for those who don't want to deal with the WP paywall:
The criminalizing of 15-year-old virtuoso Kamila Valieva is the moral disaster that the pseudo-puritan twistos of the anti-doping movement have been asking for all these years, with their “zero tolerance.” It has led to the damning of an innocent. Watch Valieva, just watch her. Discern anything in her performances but unhurried grace and pure greatness.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/02/11/sally-jenkins-valieva-anti-doping/
I have not paid much attention to ice skating in a very long time. I left the sport more than 40 years ago, when I gave myself concussion in that awkward interval between being able to land a double salchow and being able to land it WELL. I was not brave enough to keep trying. I haven't looked back very often...just noticed how younger and younger girls seem to be winning Olympics with higher and sloppier jumps. I haven't even seen this Kamila Valieva skate.
But I know I've never heard anyone say a runner or cyclist or swimmer obviously can't be taking performance-enhancing drugs, because they're so great and go so fast. Among my people, the discourse around performance enhancing drugs (on the rare occasions it comes up at all) has to do with disability or gender; ie, if they let asthmatics take steroids to bring their bodies to a "healthy" or "proper" baseline, why not also let athletes with ADHD take meds so they can focus, or let trans athletes take hormones--oh. I get it. I don't like what Jenkins is saying, but I suspect her approximate intent is:
"In their overzealous efforts to ban steroids, the IOC is attacking this innocent child who is obviously so delicate and femme she can't possibly be using steroids."
no subject
Date: 2022-02-13 03:35 pm (UTC)The columnist would have a stronger argument sticking to "WADA is a clown show and nobody even knows if the drug in question has the performance-enhancing effects that are claimed."
no subject
Date: 2022-02-14 09:58 pm (UTC)I don't think it matters if a banned drug is effective for enhancing performance. If it's banned, it's banned. Anybody who wants to compete in the Olympics agrees not to take anything on a ridiculous long list of drugs. (Not unless they apply for a specific medical exemption ahead of time. Which didn't happen in this case.) It may or may not be sensible for an athlete to trust their coaches and the experienced sports-medicine doctors to know the rules about what's allowed; some coaches and doctors are more trustworthy than others. We aren't talking about crime, here. Except maybe if there was fraud on the part of the WADA lab.
But if an athlete doesn't know the contest rules call for a "maximum of 3 spin elements," and just learns the program their coach designed, with 5 spins? The skater does not deserve to win. They are not a criminal. They just trusted the wrong person, and their trust was so badly misplaced as to be disqualifying.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-14 10:25 pm (UTC)Knowing who to trust is a tricky proposition, indeed, although I'd bet that many of the people who want their athletes to cheat (or get right up to the line thereof) present themselves as trustworthy people, much like the same kind of people who want to abuse others present themselves as trustworthy people. Who sends up taking the blame for a thing will depend on how honestly they represented themselves and what they wanted to the athlete. The skater may very well be disqualified, and very well be innocent and blameless because of that misplaced trust. That's heartbreaking.
What we need, then, is an organization that can investigate, find the truth, and then get appropriate punishments leveled against those who cheated. We can certainly hope that's WADA and the IOC, but I think the columnist is not convinced of that.