Valieva’s coach commented on the doping story for the first time: did anyone defend Kamila at the hearings?

Eteri Tut­beridze wrote a long post on social net­works in which she talked about her emo­tions after the athlete’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Eteri Tut­beridze, the coach of fig­ure skater Kami­la Valie­va, com­ment­ed for the first time on the sto­ry of her ward’s dop­ing test. Pre­vi­ous­ly, dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, she refrained from com­ment­ing, but today she decid­ed to devote time to a res­o­nant and sad sto­ry.

Eteri Tut­beridze stat­ed that she did not specif­i­cal­ly com­ment on the dop­ing sto­ry, despite “to unde­served end­less hate and accu­sa­tions”, so as not to inter­fere with the inves­ti­ga­tion, hop­ing for a favor­able out­come for Kami­la Valie­va. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this did not hap­pen, and the inves­ti­ga­tion turned out to be one-sided and unfair to the ath­lete.

Kami­la Valie­va was dis­qual­i­fied for four years for dop­ing

Rus­si­a’s Olympic gold was tak­en away due to Kami­la Valieva’s dop­ing test

Fig­ure skater Kami­la Valie­va per­formed to the sound­track from “The Boy’s Word”: video from the Russ­ian Championship​​​​​​​

The coach stat­ed: “And I, prob­a­bly more than any­one, want­ed this sto­ry to be thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed and for me not to have any ques­tions left, even if it was an over­sight, a mis­take or a crime on someone’s part.”. But judg­ing by the tone of the mes­sage (and the way the inves­ti­ga­tion was con­duct­ed), this did not hap­pen. The court was unable to find out how dop­ing got into Valieva’s blood: as a result of an error, over­sight, crime on some­one else’s part.

Tut­beridze sep­a­rate­ly empha­sized that she is the main per­son who was inter­est­ed in a com­pe­tent inves­ti­ga­tion, and ath­letes under her lead­er­ship have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions with strict dop­ing con­trol since 2010 and have nev­er had any prob­lems, so the sit­u­a­tion baf­fles her.

“We have always taught and explained to our ath­letes and their par­ents that they need to be more care­ful when tak­ing even the sim­plest cold med­ica­tions and, unfor­tu­nate­ly, can­not trust absolute­ly any­one.”said Tut­beridze.

What is impor­tant: the coach did not put the bur­den of blame on Valie­va, but rather tried to sup­port and reas­sure the girl as much as pos­si­ble. “She is a child and on my part I will con­tin­ue to sup­port her in every pos­si­ble way,” Tut­beridze promised.

She also spoke about the skills of her ward: “No offense to all my pre­vi­ous ath­letes — Kami­la is the most gift­ed ath­lete. And her sport­ing lot faced a test that is dif­fi­cult to describe in words. Regard­ing the ver­dict, I have one main ques­tion: did at least some­one defend Kami­la at the hear­ings, because the ver­dict couldn’t have been worse.”.