Bach 'disturbed' by Valieva's meltdown

BEIJING • The International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Thomas Bach said yesterday it had been "chilling" to witness Russian teenage skater Kamila Valieva crumble under pressure at the Beijing Olympics as a doping scandal continued to swirl, as he hit out at the 15-year-old's entourage.

Valieva, who had been leading the women's figure skating event after the short programme, cracked and fell several times in her free skate on Thursday, and stumbled down to fourth place as compatriot Anna Shcherbakova skated to gold.

"I must say I was very, very disturbed yesterday when I watched the competition on TV," Bach said.

Valieva tested positive for a banned heart drug in December but the result was only revealed on Feb 8, a day after she had already helped the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) win the team event.

The Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) lifted a provisional ban on her and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Monday rejected an appeal by the IOC, the International Skating Union (ISU) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) to reinstate the suspension.

"To see her struggling on the ice, how she tries to compose herself again... you could see in every movement, in the body language, you could feel that this is immense, immense mental stress and maybe she would have preferred to just leave the ice and try to leave this story behind her," added Bach.

A distraught Valieva struggled to hide her tears but Russian coach Eteri Tutberidze was seen demanding to know what had gone wrong as the teenager came off the ice, her head bowed and looking pale.

"Why did you let it go? Explain it to me, why? Why did you stop fighting completely? Somewhere after the axel you let it go," Tutberidze was caught saying on camera.

That reaction confounded Bach, who said that it was "extremely important" to look into Valieva's entourage after teammate Alexandra Trusova was also highly agitated after her silver medal-winning routine and missing out on gold.

"When I afterwards saw how she was received by her close entourage... it was chilling to see this." he said. "Rather than giving her comfort, to try to help her, you could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance and if you were interpreting the body language, it got even worse because this was even some kind of dismissive gestures.

"All of this does not give me much confidence in Kamila's closest entourage."

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE