2022 Winter Olympics

[Lani]

I woke up during the night, and the pairs skating was underway. It was excellent! Glad I woke up. If you love figure skating, check out the top 10. All of the pairs were wonderful.

[Reality Check]

I cannot recall having less interest in the Winter Olympics than this year. With YouTube TV I can watch about anything I want whenever too. I have watched a little of the men's and women's' ice hockey by fast forwarding to the last 5 minutes and some curling. That's about it. Other than that nada.

[andersweinstein]

I came across a surprising fact about the unresolved Team figure skating competition. If the ultimate adjudication of Valieva's doping case yields a sanction that retroactively makes her ineligible to have competed in the Olympics (which is not at all certain, but is possible), the IOC evidently has no definite rules on what should happen to the Team competition. But one approach, which has some precedent, would be to strike her individual results from the competition, but not those of other skaters on the ROC team. If this is done, the ROC team would have its scores dropped from 10 to 0 in each the Women's SP and FS components, thereby losing them 20 points, one quarter of the total possible of 80 points, as if they did not field any competitor at all in those events. And that would drop them all the way to ... third place, giving them Bronze, with a team score still one point ahead of Canada's.

[Lani]

It's a mess. The team gymnastics event was won by ROC, US second or third. Because to the doping problem, the US team should have received their medals. But they left w/o them. Could be months before they they get their medals, if ever. With the long history of Russia doping, you'd think IOC would have a plan in place.

[andersweinstein]

With the long history of Russia doping, you'd think IOC would have a plan in place.

As I see it, the problem stems from the fact that this was not a violation at the Olypmics and there was an unconscionable delay in processing the December sample. A major point in the CAS arbiters' decision was the idea that "athletes should not be subject to the risk of serious harm occasioned by anti-doping authorities’ failure to function effectively at a high level of performance and in a manner designed to protect the integrity of the operation of the Games". I seem to be alone in agreeing with the CAS decision to let her compete. It seems this fuckup by the testing system created procedural injustice to the minor athlete (no possibility to gather evidence to fight the provisional suspension) which was not her fault, and of course the whole thing produced this fiasco for the games. See https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles ... ge-valieva about this aspect of the CAS ruling.

On the disposition of the team comp, it seems WADA has rules governing individual athletes which could render her ineligible, but leaves handling of the Olympics to the IOC. But the IOC rules only deal with doping violations detected at the games, and her test there was clean. It looks like they were assuming that situations like this would be dealt with before the games -- as they ought to have been if the WADA guidelines on testing time were followed. This piece has more detail on the issue:

[andersweinstein]

Well we don't have to wonder how Valieva and the other Russians will fare at this month's World Figure Skating championships.

[Dr. Ken]

[RTH10260]

Doctor heal thyself

[andersweinstein]

Nearly two years after the fact, the Valieva doping case affecting the 2022 Olympics has finally been decided by the Court of Arbitration for sports:



You may remember team figure skating medals were never awarded. This is a matter for the IOC who delegates it to the ISU. According to Brennan, the ISU was apparently caught unprepared by this announcement and will not issue its decision until tomorrow (Tuesday Jan 30). The expected effect is that without Valieva's points, Russia drops to fifth and US team moves up to Gold, followed by Japan for the Silver and Canada for the Bronze.

Many people are noting that there is no punishment for the adults in the system who would bear primary responsibility for doping the then-15-year old Valieva.

Longer piece https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2024/01/29/kamila-valieva-russian-skater-banned-four-years-doping-beijing-olympics/72393824007/

[p0rtia]

Wow. Thanks. I only with the fuckers who drugged her were the ones being banned. Without that, this is just further child abuse.

[andersweinstein]

A legalistic fine point: back when they allowed her to compete, the CAS appealed to her status as a "protected person", meaning someone under 16, to exempt her from the otherwise-automatic provisional suspension that would have ensued according to the relevant rules on discovery of her positive test. I gathered at the time there wasn't any rule saying protected persons are exempt from the provisional ban rule. But they appealed to the general purpose of the protected person rules with lesser sanctions and standards of evidence, together with some other circumstances (the test result was unconscionably delayed in a way not her fault).

So what happened to that leniency for "protected persons"? Here they say there is no basis in the Russian Anti-Doping Rules for different sanctions for a protected person than for anyone else, unless she could prove by "balance of probabilities" the doping was unintentional. They judged she failed to that, so wound up in effect sentencing her as an adult under the Russian ADR.

[andersweinstein]

The expected effect is that without Valieva's points, Russia drops to fifth and US team moves up to Gold, followed by Japan for the Silver and Canada for the Bronze.

The mess continues with a bit of weirdness in the ISU implementation: they dropped Valieva's two 10-point scores for first-place in the relevant events. But they DID NOT bump the scores of the other competitors. That is, the second place finisher remained earning 9 points for team, rather than moving up to 10 points since now a first place finisher after DQing Valieva. This unexpected method rewards the Russian (technically "ROC") team, leaving them with Bronze, screwing Canada out of that expected 3rd place slot.

Both Canada and Russia say they will appeal this implementation to the CAS.

It seems like real chutzpah for Russia to appeal, since they were the team with a player disqualified for doping and the ISU might have chosen to disqualify the whole team. They say want to argue sanctions against an individual player cannot be the basis for reviewing team events. Doubt this will fly.

[Mrich]

Team USA figure skaters will finally get their gold medal!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/other/ ... 47a2&ei=50

[p0rtia]

Finally.

[p0rtia]

No Russian teams allowed to participate (I'm happy about this).

Fourteen individual athletes from Russia/Belarus will compete:

The full list released by the IOC, as of Saturday:

Canoe/kayak (3): Aleksei Korovashkov, Zakhar Petrov and Olesia Romasenko
Cycling - road (3): Tamara Dronova, Alena Ivanchenko and Gleb Syritsa
Gymnastics - trampoline (1): Anzhela Bladtceva
Swimming (1): Evgenii Somov
Tennis (7): Ekaterina Aleksandrova, Mirra Andreeva, Pavel Kotov, Daniil Medvedev, Roman Safiullin, Diana Shnaider and Elena Vesnina