Russian figure skaters wade into banned drugs and burned out the "Ice Queen" coach controversy
The 15-year-old Russian figure skater Valeva was embroiled in a drug ban controversy at the Beijing Winter Olympics, and her coaching team faces scrutiny, especially Eteri Tutberidze, the "Ice Queen" who has trained several gold medalists.
The International Testing Agency said yesterday that drug test samples collected by Kamila Valieva at the Russian National Championship on December 25 last year tested positive on the 8th of this month.
The Anti-Banned Drug Disciplinary Committee of the Russian Anti-Banned Drug Organization (RUSADA) once imposed a temporary ban on Valeva, but after Waliva raised objections, the temporary ban was lifted on the 9th, allowing her to continue to participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics.
After the matter was disclosed, Russia's Twitter began to be filled with the label "#ShameOnTutberidze" (tuberize shame" (#ShameOnTutberidze).
Russia's anti-banning organization said it had launched an investigation into the staff around Valywa.
Russia's anti-ban drug group did not name 47-year-old Tuberez, and there was no sign that she had made any mistakes, but the incident brought renewed public attention to her notoriously rigorous training methods. For the Beijing Winter Olympics, Tuberez trained a whole team of young skaters with the task of winning gold.
Waliva trained with 17-year-old teammates Alexandra Trusova and Anna Shcherbakova under Tuberez, who had hoped to dominate the women's singles skating event at the Beijing Winter Olympics together.
In an interview with Russia's Channel One at the end of December, Tuberez said: "It would be great if all three medals were in our pockets." ”
Tuberez has a cold attitude and a coaching style that does not smile, and the Russians call him the "Queen of Ice". She came to the fore at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics when she coached 15-year-old figure skating rising star Yulia Lipnitskaya stunned four-seaters with the long song "Schindler's List" and helped Russia return to the team gold medal.
Tuberez went on to become one of the hottest coaches in the global figure skating world. With long, curly blonde hair and deep brown eyes, she is a well-known Russian celebrity. In this country, domination sports can easily bring national pride.
Tubberez told Channel One last December: "I tend to be outspoken to my athletes because they only hear praise from others. ”
Born into a family of five in Moscow, Tuberez originally wanted to become a figure skater in women's singles, but was forced to switch to ice dance due to injury. She went to the United States in the early 1990s, but she was unable to work in ice dancing, and after a period of poor living, she was finally hired as an ice skating coach, but she began to miss home.
After returning to Moscow, her job search was still not smooth, and she once trained amateurs in the ice circus, and it was not until 2008 that she began to coach at an ice rink in Moscow, and a page of Skating history in Russia began.
After Lipnitskaya rose to fame at the Sochi Olympics, Evgenia Medvedeva under Tubberez swept the European and World Championships in 2016 and 2017.
At the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Alina Zagitova and Medvedeva, trained by Toberez, won gold and silver medals in the women's singles event.
However, Tuberez's success was also accompanied by some behind-the-scenes scandals, and several athletes left her one after another. Lipnitskaya left the team in 2015 and decided to retire; Medvedeva announced in 2018 that she was moving to Toronto, Canada, under the tutelage of Canadian coach Brian Orser.
Medvedeva said in a YouTube interview last August that Tuberez's training approach "works, but as we get older, it gets more unbearable every year." Medvedeva also revealed that she has never been praised even if she won the medal, and has even been "cruelly treated".
In 2020, Trusova and promising Alena Kostornaia announced that they were leaving Tuberez and moving to Evgeni Plushenko. Once known as Russia's "Prince on Ice", Plushenko holds four Winter Olympic medals, including a figure skating men's singles gold medal.
Tuberez wrote on Instagram at the time: "Will there be any changes to our training system? No. Everything we do is right. ”
Perhaps Russia's best-known skating coach, Tatiana Tarasova, said it was absurd to speculate that Tuberitz and Proshenko were competing with each other, believing that Tuberez was a brilliant coach and that Proshenko was a "beginner" in coaching.
Ekaterina Bobrova, a retired Russian ice dancer, said Tuberez "humiliates people, but in her own eyes, she does it out of good intentions."
Trusova, Kostonaya and Medvedeva, who had once left Tuberez, also returned to her arms.
