2022 Winter Olympics

[p0rtia]

what is the medal count so far?

Screen Shot 2022-02-09 at 10.38.57 PM.png (352.67 KiB) Viewed 1420 times

[Lani]

Nathan Chen! If you didn't see his long program, you should! Highest score ever by A LOT. And he was having fun doing it.

[p0rtia]

Fabulous free skate, but not the highest score ever. Chen holds that record from a previous tourney, though.

[Lani]

Yeah, you're right. 335.30 points at the 2019 Grand Prix, 332.60 at the Olympics.

[Mrich]

Here is a very revealing article about the Russian women's figure skating doping:

https://www.vox.com/22929275/kamila-val ... mpics-2022

[RVInit]

I have seen some interesting video and written articles about why more and more women's singles skating is being dominated by the youngsters. It's because these younger women can more easily perform quad jumps. In competition scoring jumps are important. It's physiologically far more difficult for woman with a mature body to perform a quad jump.

I remember when women's skating was dominated more by "older", i.e. 18 and over, women. They became champions, and stayed champions, sometimes for many years. These younger champions ones are here today, gone tomorrow. It's precisely because today they can to the quad jump, but tomorrow they are too old to perform the jump and here comes the newest 15 year old currently doing the quad jumps to take the crown away. Women's skating is definitely changing, we hardly remember the name of the last young American woman who wowed us with her athletic jumps and stole the show.

For my part, I can hardly stand to watch this newest one. There is nothing artistic, beautiful, graceful, or inspiring about her performances. She spends so much of her performance time racing around at great speed in order to be able to hit the next jump and stay airborne long enough to achieve four rotations. I appreciate athleticism in skating as much as anyone else, but this is athleticism that takes away, not contributes to a beautiful artistic performance. YMMV of course.

[Lani]

I'm going to be angry if she is allowed to continue at the Olympics. The Russians having been doping forever. That's why the athletes are under ROC instead of Russia. A stupid workaround so the doped athletes can still compete, but not technically for Russia.

[p0rtia]

I'm going to be angry if she is allowed to continue at the Olympics. The Russians having been doping forever. That's why the athletes are under ROC instead of Russia. A stupid workaround so the doped athletes can still compete, but not technically for Russia.

Unless there is more info (a negative B-test) to come out, it seems that she should not be able to compete. That will make me sad, not mad--I love Kamila. HOWEVER, if she is booted and her despicable team, Eteri and co., are allowed to stay, THEN I will be angry along with you. It is inconceivable to me that she was intentionally doping.

[RVInit]

Apparently they are going to allow her to continue to compete. That is a load of hogwash. Her test results reasonably should have been back earlier, which would have disqualified her from being on the team in the first place. The Russians have learned once again they can cheat at Olympic sports. I can't even remember a time when Russia competed in good faith in any Olympic competition.

Oh well. My favorite ice dancing pair, the French team, won the gold. I am waiting for the video to make it up to YouTube, it's not there yet. One of the American teams earned the bronze medal - Hubbell and Donohue. Chock and Bates. the other really great American team came in fourth.

[filly]

There is a documentary on Netflix about the scandal in the 1990s Olympics where the Canadian pairs team got screwed out if a Gold medal due to corrupt judges. I vaguely remembered the scandal as I was very busy in those days. Eventually they gave the Canadian team a Gold medal too and they were “co-champions “ with the Russians.

I view the entire Olympics through a different lens now between that and the gymnastics abuses and of course the doping. The whole thing is corrupt.

[Lani]

Washington Post timeline of Russia's state-sponsored Olympic doping scandal

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/o ... g-scandal/

[Kendra]

I have to wonder what the atmosphere is like in the locker room (or whatever it's called) for the skaters and coaches.

[p0rtia]

I'm into figure skating (for a non-skater), evidenced by the fact that I pay ever winter to join a fs chat board (the snark is sizzling). Lots of view and thoughts, and links to more. Here is a tweet that IMO represents what athletes and fans are thinking.

[RVInit]

On a happier note. This is cuteness overload. Nathan Chen's first ever competition

[Liz]

.... but this is athleticism that takes away, not contributes to a beautiful artistic performance. YMMV of course.

Agreed.
The same has happened in women's gymnastics, most notable floor exercise and balance beam. Instead of graceful and artistic they've become tumbling routines with flips, twists, spins, doubles, triples Oh My! ... which favors those of small stature.

[Kendra]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/spor ... tions.html

A sample provided by a teenage Russian figure skater to an antidoping laboratory before the Beijing Games included three substances that are sometimes used to help the heart, according to a document filed in her arbitration hearing on Sunday.

The skater, Kamila Valieva, was cleared to continue competing in the Games by a panel of arbitrators on Monday even though a drug found in her system, trimetazidine, is on the list of drugs banned by global antidoping officials. Valieva, 15, provided the sample in December, but Russian antidoping officials said they had learned of her positive result only last week.

But according to documents reviewed by The New York Times and confirmed by someone who took part in the hearing, the Stockholm laboratory that carried out the examination of Valieva’s sample also found evidence of two other substances that can treat the heart but are not on the banned list. Valieva even listed them, Hypoxen and L-carnitine, on a doping control form.

The presence of trimetazidine in Valieva’s system may have been a mistake, Russian and Olympic officials have suggested. But the discovery of several substances in the sample of an elite athlete, especially one as young as Valieva, was highly unusual, according to a prominent antidoping official.

[Kriselda Gray]

Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva cleared to compete in the Olympics but the medal ceremony will be canceled if she wins

On Monday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissed appeals by multiple bodies and lifted a provisional suspension imposed on Kamila Valieva, who tested positive in December for banned substance trimetazidine. Following the decision, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said there will be no medal ceremony for events either Valieva or the Russian team compete in if they finish in the top three. The 15-year-old was part of the team that won a gold medal for the Russian Olympic Committee last Monday.

[Mrich]

The videos posted by Youtube user "Fran" (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_oCF_ ... QXOAe7mVEg) are very informative. If you have time, they are worth watching, in particular this playlist:



I don't know who she is, but she seems to know what she's talking about.

Also, this tweet has an interesting photo:

[p0rtia]

The pidgeons come home to roost on the Court of Arbitration for Sports' decision to let Valieva skate because it would cause her irreparable harm if she did not: all three Russian girls in turmoil; the figure skating world in outrage; Russian athletes all suspect, and...the Svengali herself giving a small example of the child abuse she dishes out on a daily basis.

[p0rtia]

The pidgeons come home to roost on the Court of Arbitration for Sports' decision to let Valieva skate because it would cause her irreparable harm if she did not: all three Russian girls in turmoil; the figure skating world in outrage; Russian athletes all suspect, and...the Svengali herself giving a small example of the child abuse she dishes out on a daily basis.

The tweet was taken down, presumably for video copyright violation. Here is what Eteri, Valieva's coach*, said to her as she greeted her at the boards after that massive and completely understandable and predictable collapse:

The girl have just had the worst moment of her life, but this is the first thing Eteri says: "Why did you let it go? Explain it to me, why. Why did stop fighting? You let it go after that axel." Why?

[Lani]

And this is why Russia should not have been allowed to compete under ROC - just a smokescreen to let Russia compete despite its history of drugging. And a teenager is suffering because of that. Probably her teammates as well.

US athletes have suffered as well.

The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal relates to the sexual abuse of female athletes—primarily minors at the time of the abuse—over two decades in the United States, starting in the late 1990s. More than 368 people alleged that they were sexually assaulted "by gym owners, coaches, and staff working for gymnastics programs across the country." Longtime USA Gymnastics (USAG) national team doctor Larry Nassar was specifically named in hundreds of lawsuits filed by athletes who said that Nassar engaged in sexual abuse for at least 14 years under the pretense of providing medical treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Gymna ... se_scandal

Other people assaulted the gymnasts as well. Initially, Simone Biles did not disclose what she had suffered for years, but then she spoke up. The emotional pain was substantial, and she only competed in one event during the summer Olympics 2021, winning a bronze medal.

[Volkonski]

Disturbing. Her trainers are not nice people.

So many other cases of poor treatment of young performers as well. Not just in sports but also the entertainment industry.

[Volkonski]

[Suranis]

The only difference this time is that the Coach did this publicly so the IOC has to respond to the outrage. They are probably privatly telling the coaches to take it away from the Cameras in future and what the hell was he thinking?

I stopped watching Gymnastics because its pretty obvious that the girls are mistreated by pretty much everyone. And the other issue for me is that I found it pretty freaky the way Grown Men can compete fine, but only Teenage Girls are on the boards on the other side.

[Uninformed]

The Olympics. Probably the best showcase for the not so happy confluence of nationalism and the power of money in what should be a celebration of physical prowess. A jaundiced view? Yup.