Cloud of doubt will loom over 'very fragile' Valieva

BEIJING • After leading her Russian team to the gold medal in the figure skating team event last Monday, before the world around her started to crumble, Kamila Valieva stood at the front of a room filled with reporters.

At first, she could not figure out how to wear the earpiece that delivered her simultaneous translations and looked around for help. She fumbled with the microphone and then giggled nervously, like the 15-year-old she is.

"More courage! More courage!" Nikita Katsalapov, 30, the team leader of the Russian squad, told her. "It's going to be OK!"

The day he described Valieva as "a very fragile little girl" who was so powerful and mature on the ice that he often forgot her age.

It was a snapshot of a teenager new to a spotlight that in the past few days has become blinding.

Valieva charged into the top level of the sport just four months ago when she competed in her first senior-level international competition. A prima ballerina on blades, she started setting world records for points with her fast-whirring quadruple jumps and artistry so elegant that she radiated maturity.

Going into the Beijing Games, she was tagged as the favourite to win but now is at the centre of a doping scandal that might be the beginning of the end of a brilliant career, despite the respite that came with the Court of Arbitration for Sport's decision yesterday to allow her to compete in the Olympic singles event today.

Caught up in this whirlwind, Valieva tried to hide her face from reporters last week at the practice rink in Beijing after revelations that she had testing positive for a banned heart medication weeks before the Games.

No matter who bears the most responsibility for the scandal, she faces a future of scrutiny over whether performance-enhancing drugs have helped her win.

Two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt said Valieva "is not to blame here" noting that "you are taught from a very young age to trust" the coaches and medical team. She wrote on Facebook: "No doping would have helped her to land these (quads)!!!"

This was far from the moment Valieva had been waiting for since she was three, when she told her mother that she wanted to be an Olympic champion.

Like many top skaters, Valieva started out in ballet and gymnastics before choosing figure skating.

When Valieva was in elementary school, her family moved to Moscow so she could train with a better coach. When she was about 12, she was invited to train under Eteri Tutberidze. Valieva said she felt lucky. She had been feeling down about the sport, but last year said she and Tutberidze were a good match because the coach "loves skaters who are close to despair".

Tutberidze, a former pairs skater, had coached the women's singles gold medallist at the last two Olympics. Those skaters - as well as her first successful one at the Olympics, Yulia Lipnitskaya - battled injuries or eating disorders, or both, and left the sport soon after they reached the top.

Yet Tutberidze got results. Last year, Valieva skated in her first senior-level international competition and was immediately called the favourite for Beijing after easily landing quadruple jump after quadruple jump - a rare feat on the women's side of the sport.

"She combines it all," Olympic champion and NBC commentator Tara Lipinski said. "She's a ballerina out there doing quads, and you don't see that much in skating. To me, she has the best quad in figure skating, and that includes the men."

NYTIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE