I Hope to Never See a Figure Skating Event Like That Again
The beauty from some Olympic skaters was not worth seeing a child emotionally broken on live television.
BY CHRIS SCHLEICHER
FEB 17, 2022 9:49 PM
As a figure skater, you dream of what your Olympic moment will be like. The scores are read, your eyes go wide in disbelief, the announcer proclaims you’re in first place. Can this be real? You hug your coach as the crowd goes wild. One of the joys of watching the Olympics is seeing moments like this, dreams realized. I have indelible memories of such celebrations. In 1998, Tara Lipinski leapt into the air and released a series of ear-splitting shrieks when she found out she won, embracing her coaches in pure joy. In 2002, Sarah Hughes fell to the ground in shock backstage, laughing and smiling in disbelief, her coach grabbing her face and exclaiming, “You won the gold medal at the Olympics!”
At the 2022 Beijing Olympics, there was no such moment of joy. The scene that I witnessed instead made me feel hollow and heartbroken, like I was somehow complicit in the mental anguish of these young women by even watching. When it was announced that 17-year-old Anna Shcherbakova was the gold medalist, the camera didn’t even cut to her for several minutes. Instead, we watched 15-year-old Kamila Valieva, the girl at the center of the Olympic doping scandal, the skater seen as near-certain to capture the gold medal, crumble into a ball of tears upon learning she had ended up in fourth place after a disastrous free skate. Valieva received only perfunctory support from her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, who had berated her as soon she stepped off the ice: “Why did you let it go? Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel. Why?”
As Valieva exited the kiss-and-cry, she passed silver medalist Alexandra Trusova, also crying, throwing what can only be described as a temper tantrum. When someone offered Trusova an arm of support, she jumped away and shouted in Russian: “I can’t see this! I won’t see this!” One might have imagined these remarks were in sympathy for her training mate Valieva, but later comments made it clear it was bitterness over receiving silver. Trusova is quoted as exclaiming, “I hate it! … I don’t want to do anything in figure skating ever in my life! … Everyone has a gold medal, and I don’t!” One can forgive a teenage girl for having an emotional response to disappointment in a high-stakes situation, but Trusova’s reaction was an ugly display of poor sportsmanship, happening mere feet from a devastated Valieva. Trusova would later have to be coaxed into even coming back onto the ice to accept her second place finish.
As Valieva retreated into the bowels of the stadium, the broadcast finally cut back to Shcherbakova, the Olympic gold medalist. She stood alone, joyless, clutching a teddy bear in silence. She shifted uneasily, eyes cast down to the floor, unsure where to look. She sat back down again on a couch, no one on her team anywhere in sight. It was perhaps the loneliest image I have ever seen at the Olympics.
Why was Shcherbakova all alone? For context, one must know that all three of these Russian teenagers are coached by Eteri Tutberidze. Ostensibly, the members of her team were off attending to the meltdowns of Valieva and Trusova. It called to mind the conclusion of the 2018 Olympics, in which Tutberidze’s students Alina Zagitova and Evgenia Medvedeva finished first and second, respectively. That result was also seen as a big upset, as Medvedeva had been favored for gold. When the scores were announced, Medvedeva cried in disappointment as Zagitova sat backstage, nervously smiling through tears and staring down at a stuffed doll in her hands. Tutberidze has now left in her trail a plethora of teenagers who burned bright and then retired from the sport with injuries and eating disorders. Named the International Skating Union coach of the year 2020, Tutberidze is now at the center of a discussion about the treatment of minors in figure skating. Based on her treatment of her students in the past and her possible involvement in Valieva taking banned heart medication, I desperately hope Tutberidze is investigated and suspended from coaching. We cannot continue like this.