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The dark side of the Winter Olympics

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The Winter Olympics were a glittering success for Beijing. But the beautiful TV pictures and some remarkable performances don’t gloss over a dark side that Xi Jinping’s regime is still trying hard to hide.
The allegations of human rights abuses may have been quietened for 16 days, but they are still there. China’s economic power, and its influence particularly in Africa, shouldn’t be the reason those concerns are shoved under the proverbial carpet. Groups like the Uyghur, the people of Tibet, and the defenders of democracy in Hong Kong deserve better.
The second point is, where is Peng Shuai? The concern for one of China’s most successful tennis players all but disappeared when the glitz and glamour of high-level sport took center stage. But there are still no real answers for those concerned about her well-being. Peng Shuai levelled serious accusations of sexual abuse against former vice president Zhang Gaoli. The post was quickly taken down, but for three weeks, no one knew what happened to her. She then had a conversation with International Olympic Committee head Thomas Bach and was seen at some junior tennis tournaments around Beijing. But the suggestion from groups like Amnesty International is that these are controlled and staged. Until she is free to move around and talk without bodyguards and minders in another country, the world should remain concerned for her.
And the third point has less to do with China, and more to do with the rest of the world, particularly Russia and the United States. On the day after Russia had won the team medal in figure skating, the news broke that 15-year-old prodigy Kamila Valieva had tested positive for a banned drug on Christmas Day. Over the next few hours and days, it emerged that it was a heart medication, trimetazidine, that the Russian Anti Doping Agency, RUSADA, had suspended her only to lift it within 24 hours, and that many, many people were not happy. The IOC, the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Skating Federation went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to try to prevent her from competing. CAS decided she should be able to, pending the outcome of the doping charge. In essence, they let her out on bail.
But there are a number of important facts to remember:

  1. Valieva is 15 years old, a child by any standards, and according to WADA, a ‘protected person’ by definition
  2. She has not yet been found guilty. She has the right to have her B Sample tested, and that process takes time.
  3. Even if she is found guilty, she may not be banned. Her age will give her lawyers a basis to argue for a warning or some other sanction.
  4. WADA and the IOC are not treating her differently. They are following the legal instructions of the Court of Arbitration for Sport. They have taken as much action as they can, and have not handed out medals which may have to be re-allocated after the case is finalized. An additional qualifier was added to the individual events that Valieva participated in.
  5. And she is 15 years old. At a South African school, she would be starting Grade 10.

This is all background to a story that has had emotions flaring. Former American and Canadian skaters have been outraged, saying that allowing her to compete makes a mockery of doping rules and the Olympics itself. Many quote the case of black American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, who was barred from competing days before the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for cannabis. Her test results came back quickly, and that was her misfortune. The whole case was concluded before the Games, and she was banned for a month.
But even if you agree that it’s been unfair, the treatment meted out to Valieva by adult Americans was nothing short of outrageous. One group of commentators refused to commentate on her routine, the bias was overboard from many, including the Australian commentator heard on the coverage in South Africa. All the Russian skaters, who’ve taken the sport to a new level, were roundly criticized for being ‘too technical’. Isn’t that the point, to do big and better things on ice? Valieva’s shaky performance in her free skate routine, which saw her drop out of medal contention, was proof of the kind of mental strain no 15-year-old should be subjected to.
The Russian sporting system, and the IOC’s accommodation of it despite repeated violations of doping rules, also needs to be addressed with urgency. It took over a month for Valieva’s test results from the Russian Championships to be made public. Russian athletes are still Russian, even if you want to call them ‘The Russian Olympic Committee. President Vladimir Putin cheers them on just as he would be any other name. The transparency in doping control that was demanded them to be readmitted isn’t, well, very visible. RUSADA’s handling of this case should be raising a big red flag – the problem still exists. Remember this is the organisation that allowed state operatives to sneak through hidden doors at night to switch out questionable samples during the Sochi Winter Games. That was 2014, 8 years ago and it seems the problem is still not solved. The crackdown needs to be harder, the punishment more severe. And maybe WADA needs more teeth. The problem with that though is that WADA is heavily influenced by Americans. By nature, it’s always going to be controlled by a few rich countries who can contribute to it financially.
The International Olympic Committee has undergone some serious reforms recently, particularly with regards to the hosting process. But if it’s going to maintain the reverence for its gold medals, it’s going to need to do the same with anti-doping. That’s going to require a greater buy-in from individual national Olympic Committees, and more uniformity from individual sporting federations. And it’s going to require some serious backbone and legal teeth when dealing with serious offenders.

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