Skater A is confirmed to be Haein Lee, and skater B is Young You. These are not small allegations, and anyone who has continued to support those skaters should cease doing so.
okay so im assuming this is only about figure skating and i mean oml there was so much going on. below the cut bc i think this is gonna be long.
okay so FIRST OF ALL the kamila valieva situation. where to begin. (as a note: none of this is a statement on her except in relation to the 2022 olys)
the positive test being from rusnats and only being found out in february is weird. idk if we ever found out exactly why that happened? but i can only assume it was meddling from the russian end.
i think the media response was cruel, and i think part of that was a lot of people were trying to talk about it without knowing the full situation, but the amount of vicious hate and blame kamila received was unjustified. she was fifteen years old and in an abusive situation, to what extent she knew about the doping is irrelevant in my mind, the blame falls on the adults in power (mainly her coaches). eteri tutberidze is notoriously controlling and abusive, and there is no way any of that was happening without her being responsible. she controls the amount of WATER her skaters can drink. skating at that level, especially in russia, your coach is practically your primary guardian; if eteri told her to dope then there was pretty much nothing she could do. only eteri girls were ever going to go to the olympics, if she switched coaches that would have ended her life's goal (and the way they train is so all-consuming that to not get to the olympics at all would have felt life shattering).
should she have been been allowed to skate? i dont think so. at least partially bc it essentially proves to coaches that you can "get away with" doping as long as the people you are drugging are children. obviously having an athlete who has taken performance enhancing drugs is unfair to everyone else, but that goes without saying. HOWEVER i do understand the worry that the test could have been wrong or she might not have known, either way it would have been unfair to her. (the "irreparable harm" quote is always taken out of context - they meant that if she skated and was found guilty they could strip her of the medal, but if she was banned and found innocent there was no fixing it). ultimately though i think letting her skate was the wrong decision (especially since the case STILL hasnt been settled).
i dont think eteri told her to throw the free to make sure the others got their medals, because she looked so traumatised afterwards and eteri reacted so badly (ive never understood this theory tbh)
that was the first scandal from the olys but oml it was definitely not the last. there was so much going on. olympics from hell. lets talk about the womens podium.
(but first a note on ultra c elements: do i think the sport is suffering because of the increased value placed on jumps? yes. do i think artistry is important? absolutely. do i think there is a conversation to be had about the morals of training young children (especially girls) to do dangerous jumps that cause permanent damage to their bodies? one hundred fucking percent. things need to change in this sport. however. i will make repeated references to whether or not someone is jumping ultra c when discussing the podium, because that is how its scored atm, and i do think that they aren’t irrelevant (it is a sport, athletic feats are also important) just please please know that i am also taking artistry into account its just harder to objectively phrase in a short paragraph and this is already long enough). okay caveat over. please no one attack me. lets go.
look i KNOW the most pressing question is do i think anna deserved gold HOWEVER. have you considered. did anna deserve to be sent to the olympics at all. and this makes me insane because like?? skating like she did at the olys?? yeah she probably deserved to be there!! so it kinda seems mean to talk about this but ALSO i feel like we definitely have to not forget it so. the russian olympic team was pretty much based off of the podium for rusnats, which that year was kamila, sasha, anna. but anna in third place was veryyy controversial bc like. she had no ultra c elements at all (and her tech is DODGY so without them it gets even harder to justify her high scores) but elizaveta had a triple axel (and better tech) so a LOT of people thought that she should have come third, but rusfed just wanted to send anna to the olys instead (which i pretty much agree with).
but okay whether you like it or not she DID make the olympic team so. womens olympic podium. a grenade of a question. everyone is allowed their own opinions on it im not saying anyone is wrong if they think differently!!!!! also im only going to talk about the top five bc this is already wayyy too long.
i know on tiktok a while back the popular opinion was that wakaba should’ve been gold, which i don’t really agree with, however she absolutely should not have been fifth. no doubt in my mind she should have been at LEAST fourth, if not third. kamila should have been behind her i don’t care how many quads she was attempting, she fell like five times. she got through on reputation and the eteri bonus alone. kaori did skate cleanly, but with no triple c, and her tech isn’t great on some of her jumps, so wakaba (who fell on a jump, but had a triple axel, and generally better tech and artistry imo) could have come third and i would have been happy. anna i go back and forth on, because her artistry is alright, and technically she does jump quads, but her tech skills are SO questionable (her quad lutz is neither a quad nor a lutz). the tech bar for quads is lower than for triples, and i do kinda think that makes sense, but her quad tech is worse than most of the other quad jumping girls so it’s a fair comparison. i don’t think she deserved gold, but im never fully sure about silver either. honestly her, wakaba, and kaori can fight it out for second/third/fourth. in terms of actual skaters i like wakaba best, in terms of who performed best on the day i think you could make a compelling argument for any order.
that of course leaves sasha in first place. i know she fell on her triple axel in the short, but the only people who didn’t fall at all were anna (i’ll talk about her last) and kaori, and while triple c elements aren’t the only important thing, the skater who fell on one and landed five kind of has to be above the skater who attempted none at all, imo, so that puts kaori out of the running. wakaba fell once as well, and she definitely has the edge on artistry, but i don’t think sashas artistry was as bad as a lot of people say, especially in her short, so i don’t think thats quite enough to put wakaba ahead of sasha overall. sasha’s tech skills were so much higher than the rest of the skaters that i think it would be almost impossible to bridge that gap with artistry alone. lastly theres anna, who ofc actually won the ogm. two clean skates, slightly better artistry, much worse tech (i know sasha’s tech isn’t perfect either, but she’s definitely better – id say thanks to plushenko). annas tech should have been called, if not her edges then at least for prerotation. sasha fell on a triple axel and anna landed a double in the short, sasha landed five quads and anna landed two in the free. taking into account how poor her quad tech is, i don’t think that her artisty is enough to pass sasha.
however!!!! again i want to reiterate!!!!! everyone is allowed their own opinions on this!!! i do not give a damn if you think that anastasiia shabotova should have come first!!!! go you!!! to each their own <3
now for something that i do think you can wrong about. the reaction to sashas reaction to the scores was appalling. she was seventeen years old (a CHILD) in an extremely high stress situation and had been told by her (abusive, manipulative) coaches that if she landed all five quads she would win, and when this turned out to be untrue she got upset and had what was clearly a panic attack, asked not to be filmed and was ignored by every cameraman in the area, had to immediately go in front of millions of people while still being a mess, and was then attacked from all angles for being “ungrateful” and “showing bad sportsmanship.” show some empathy. (especially ppl who are still giving out about it now “on behalf of anna” when they seemed to be at least friendly again as soon as the very next day)
OKAY WE’RE ALMOST DONE i mostly only follow women’s so the rest of this is going to be brief
sui/han deserved ogm, my sister and i were rooting for miura/kihara to do well but we knew there was no chance for a medal. loving seeing them do so well rn.
nathan chen’s costume was ridiculous. last time i said my nathan chen take i got eaten alive on tiktok so im not gonna say much about him. he did deserve gold tho.
scoring felt harsh on yuzuru. wish he’d gotten another ogm but it wasn’t meant to be. im glad he got to attempt the quadruple axel at the olympics at least.
papadakis/cizeron ogm deserved.
oh MY god i forgot about the team event. pls someone save me. im so sorry i know no one wants this much. this isn’t even the worst i can do. i have talked at my friends for hours straight before about figure skating. i cant help it i have no control. we are going to ignore the team event okay. Just give them their medals. pls. i beg. they still don’t have their medals. i know it sucks for the rest of the russian team if they lose the gold bc kamila was stripped but you have to give the rest of them their medals.
anyway if you made it until the end here is a gold star ⭐ i don’t know how you did it.
Russian Junior Champion Alina Gorbacheva has gone missing in Moscow
Figure skater Alina Gorbacheva, Russian Junior champion, has gone missing in Moscow.
Source: RSport / Championat / KP
This was reported by the mother of the 16-year-old athlete.
Gorbacheva went missing around 7:00 PM the day before. The figure skater left the ice rink at the “Chkalov Arena” and headed towards the Vladimir Church. The last time she was captured on camera was at the address…
In response to Slate's article on the possibility having non-heteromative team in figure skating (particularly, ice dance and pairs), Oniceperspective shared a glimpse of Gabriella Papadakis (FRA) and Madison Hubbell (USA) working on their same-sex program. You can see how they switch the leading figure between them.
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