Eteri Tutberidze: “Was Valieva clean at the Olympics? Yes. So questions to WADA, to the laboratory – let them do whatever they want. It’s their fault. The team medal shouldn’t be reconsidered.”
Translation of Eteri Tutberidze’s comment about Kamila Valieva’s doping case.
original source: Comment Show Youtube Channel
Here’s a translation of Eteri Tutberidze’s comment about Kamila Valieva’s doping case made in a interview with Leonid Slutsky.
“Q: I wanted to talk about Kamila… And, in general, can you tell me something about what happened, how it happened…
Eteri Tutberidze: I was going through possible scenarios, questions.
I would like to put all participants of the process on a lie detector. I want to know the truth, where did this come from, what is it, why? So many questions, and I think that I will probably never get answers to them. We have to live with it.
Q: I have a simple question: how, theoretically, a not-clean athlete…
Eteri Tutberidze: Made it to the Olympics – how? When teams are going – America, Canada, Japan, it doesn’t matter, any team – the president of the figure skating federation of this or that country… First of all, we don’t have access to their personal accounts where they fill in their analyses.
Well, we definitely know that if they were allowed to the Olympics, they are all clean. If they arrived, they get the Olympic passport, they are all clean. Then they decide who will take part in the team competition – this is kept secret, strategically. If we find out that, for example, the American team puts forward not the strongest ones, maybe we won’t go all out either.
But since no one knows, everyone tries to go all out from the start. You don’t even know if they’ll put Nathan Chen or not. Well. What’s the difference? All these athletes are clean. That’s it. How did it happen that an athlete with a pending test was admitted to the Olympics?
Q: Theoretically, she could get tested after the skate, and after the fact they could say: yes, she arrived clean, but here at the Olympics…
Eteri Tutberidze: Wait. After the Russian Nationals – at the European Championships – she passed, the test was clean. Then once again – clean. At the Olympics, after the short program, then they’ll take more – all clean.
If that analysis was pending, how was she allowed in? They should have done anything to double-check it, to make sure it was ready. They shouldn’t have let such an athlete into the Olympic village already.
My opinion: the review of the team medal should not be done at all. Whose mistake is it that this athlete participated in the team? Whose? Ours? No. Was the athlete clean at the Olympics? Yes. How did she end up here? I don’t even know who to ask questions to: WADA, the laboratory.
Let them print a new medal, do whatever they want. This is their fault. It is absolutely not the team’s fault. Because we had an athlete, she was clean at this competition. She competed. The medal should not be reconsidered.
If they had told that her doping was not clean at the Russian Nationals – on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th (of February), and Anya (Shcherbakova) and Sasha (Trusova) would have skated. That’s it, and the team’s result would have been exactly the same. They would have won as well, – said Eteri Tutberidze, a distinguished coach of Russia in figure skating, in the “Comment.Show” broadcast with Leonid Slutsky.”
Related topics: Eteri Tutberidze, Kamila Valieva
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