When the then 15-year-old Valijeva fell to fourth place in the free skate, the coach could be heard saying to her over the noise microphones: “Why did you let it go? Why did you stop fighting?”. Bach paused over this and claimed that he would have the coach’s cold behavior investigated.
Valiyeva herself stood up to her coaches after the Olympics and continues to train in this group, even though she can only compete at home due to sanctions over Russia’s occupation of Ukraine. Tutberidze defends her behavior from Beijing. “You can’t embrace someone who isn’t worth it, and the problem wasn’t that she failed. On the other hand, you have no right to give up. I just asked her why she stopped competing after the second element. She just refused to fight to the end,” said Tutberidze, under under whose leadership the Olympic champion Anna Ščerbakovová was also preparing.
“I am not heartless”
“I monitor the weight of the skaters but it is to ensure that they do not lose weight”https://t.co/L5QQGpoDpd
—Anna; P/C ???? GMO 🙂 (@Anna35876145) March 26, 2023
She and Valijeva, who was a clear favorite for gold in the women’s competition before the Olympics, are said to have sat in the dressing room for a long time and discussed the situation. “The accusation from Thomas Bach is unfair, I expect an apology from him,” Tutberidze declared.
The team around the young Russian figure skater came into the spotlight after Valieva’s positive test from the Russian championships in December came to light at the Olympics. Because of this, no medals have yet been awarded in the team competition, where Valiyeva helped the Russian team to gold. Valijeová could then conditionally start in the individual race. It was only thanks to her fourth place that the medalists received their valuable metals, otherwise they would have had to wait for the ceremony as well.
Tutberidze defends her client. “I really don’t know what happened. My skaters have always been clean. We are trying to understand it with the whole team, we were looking at the camera footage from the Russian championship, where the inspection was. And we are wondering why there was such a long time between the inspection and the announcement result,” she said.
The Russian Disciplinary Commission decided that Valiyeva had done nothing wrong and did not punish her in any way. Against this, the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA, the international federation ISU and the Russian agency appealed to the CAS sports arbitration in Lausanne. WADA is demanding a four-year ban for the soon-to-be seventeen-year-old figure skater. Tutberidze is clear about what this would mean for Valieva. “It would be the end of her career,” she declared.
