Episode 238: The Figure Skating Fiasco, Explained
**CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains discussions of abuse, eating disorders and death by suicide.**
In this episode Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs and Jessica Luther break down the figure skating doping controversy at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. They start the show, however, with Olympic moments that were fuzzy and cute.
Then, they decipher what happened in the mess of the women's figure skating conclusion that started when Russian teenager Kamila Valieva tested positive for a banned substance on February 7. They discuss everything from the troubling, yet celebrated, coach Eteri Tutberidze, to what the heck trimetazidine is and what the hell the ROC is doing with it, to the alphabet soup (WADA, RUSADA, IOC, CAS ) that is "governing" the debacle. They also talk about the harm that this fiasco has caused Valieva, as well as gold medalist Anna Shcherbakova, silver medalist Alexandra Trusova and bronze medalist Kaori Sakamoto, as well as the damaging impacts that the culture of figure skating has on it's athletes, especially teenagers.
Following this discussion, you'll hear a preview of Shireen's interview with Billy Bridges, a Paralympic gold medalist and sledge hockey legend. Then, the team burns the worst of the sports this week on The Burn Pile. Next, they lift up those making sports better, including Torchbearer of the Week Sarah Nurse, Canadian women's hockey player and gold medalist who set an Olympic record of 18 points in the Beijing Games. She's also the only Black female hockey player to compete in the Olympics. They wrap up the show with what's good in their lives and what they are watching in sports this week.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Meet Kamila Valieva's 'Quad Squad' coach who's making Olympics history but whose ice skaters are 'disposable' after age 17: https://news.yahoo.com/queen-kiss-cry-meet-revered-184551255.html
Eteri Tutberidze and the Future of Figure Skating: https://medium.com/@maddnik/eteri-tutberidze-and-the-future-of-figure-skating-ede4aea1cf76
The Culture of Child Abuse That’s Poisoning Figure Skating: https://slate.com/culture/2022/02/kamila-valieva-coach-eteri-tutberidze-abuse-russia-doping.html
Stop Asking Why America Doesn’t Win Olympic Medals in Women’s-Singles Skating https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/america-olympic-medals-womens-singles-skating.html
What is trimetazidine? Would it have helped Kamila Valieva of Russia? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/sports/olympics/trimetazidine-doping-kamila-valieva.html
'Serious questions’ raised about Kamila Valieva's ‘grandfather’ excuse: https://sports.yahoo.com/kamila-valieva-took-2-other-heart-medications-raising-serious-questions-about-grandfather-excuse-111948368.html
Russian Doping Isn’t The Only Problem In Figure Skating: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/russian-doping-isnt-the-only-problem-in-figure-skating
Transcript
Brenda: Welcome to this week of Burn It All Down, the sport/feminist podcast you need. I'm Brenda Elsey, and today on the show I'm joined by two of my four favorite co-hosts, Jessica Luther and Lindsay Gibbs, as we delve into what became sadly one of the top stories of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics – the controversy surrounding 15 year old Russian skating phenom Kamila Valieva – and talk about what it tells us in terms of fairness and morality. We'll burn the BS in sports that needs to be burned this week, and we'll celebrate the people trying to make it better.
Before we begin, we'd like to make a note about the content of this episode, which will have discussions regarding eating disorders; physical, verbal, and sexual abuse; and death by suicide. Before we get into the heavy stuff, I want to ask both of you what your kind of cuddliest, cutest, fuzziest Olympic moment was? Let's start with you, Jessica.
Jessica: This is just hard. I will say, there was a lot of great stuff that happened, as always. But the thing that makes me smile the hardest is when I think back on Nick Baumgartner watching Lindsey Jacobellis come down on her run for the mixed team snowboard cross. It was for the medals. And Nick is 40, he is probably done with the Olympics at this point. This was really his last chance. He had a teary interview a couple of days earlier where he was coming to terms with that. And we got to not only watch Lindsey be amazing and win the gold medal, but then we got to watch Nick watch her win the gold medal for them. And I just loved…She’s 36, he's 40. So, a lot of people were saying it was gold for the olds. And I just adored everything about that.
Brenda: Aw. As an olds– [laughter]
Jessica: Yes, thank you for the representation. [laughter]
Brenda: And mine's also an olds too. Germans speed skater Claudia Pechstein became the oldest woman to compete at the Winter Olympics at 49, I believe. And after her skate, I just loved…She belly flopped on the ice and just kind of spun around and just sort of, like, she looked almost like a happy baby pose or something on the ice. She was just like, this is my eighth Olympics or whatever, and I'm amazing, and this has been such a ride. And she kind of just went a little bit kooky there. It was really cute!
Lindsay: I think, to counteract everything we're about to talk about today, I wanted to remember that figure skating can be full of joy and love and happiness. [laughs] And so for me it was Jason Brown, the American, who just is one of the best skaters literally ever. You know, he does not have a quad, which is what's holding him back, but his performances evoke so much emotion. He made the Olympics in 2014, did not make the team in 2018, but got back to the Olympics this year and skated the best he can do. I think it was almost like career best in both, ended up finishing sixth – sixth in the world is really, really good! [laughs]
Jessica: It's so good.
Lindsay: And I feel like we lose sight of that with all the like gold, silver, bronze, right? Like, sixth in the world is really good. And he was so proud of himself, and just like that pureness, right? Like, to get to that stage, to skate the best you can, and to leave on a great note. That was joy.
Brenda: And now to ruin all of that goodwill [Lindsay laughs] we've established amongst ourselves, as Burn It All Down does. We are going to try to take a different take on a story that's been very taken. After the women's final free skate ended, we saw what was perhaps one of the worst scenes in sport I have ever witnessed.
Announcer: Anna Shcherbakova, with that performance, who captures the gold medal, but doesn't seem like a gold medalist, the look on her face right now…Alexandra Trusova, the silver medalist, and they're not tears of joy…And Kaori Sakamoto of Japan wins the bronze medal on what has been…I don't know, an absolutely extraordinary night. Irreparable harm is the phrase that was used. The competition that made so many angry this week, now leaving us empty and sad as well.
Brenda: Lindsay, how did we get here?
Lindsay: As we talked about last week on the show, Kamila Valieva tested positive after the team competition. She didn't test positive during the Olympics. It was a sample that was taken on December 25th that didn't come back until this. She was allowed to compete – we’ll get into that, don’t worry. And after the short skate, even though it wasn't her best, she was in the gold medal position. But in the free skate, everything fell apart. The fact was, if Valieva made the top three, made the podium, there wouldn't have been a medal ceremony, because everything right now is provisional as it…You know, she's allowed to compete, but the actual results are provisional.
Before she skated, her two teammates skated. And we had Alexandra Trusova, who was in fourth after the short program, land five quadruple jumps in her free skate. That vaulted her up to the top of the leaderboard, until her other Russian teammate, Anna Shcherbakova, landed two quads, but had a much more beautiful performance, and also was ahead in the short skate, vaulting her to first place. Then Valieva took the ice, and it was a disaster. The usually steely competitor fell twice, barely completed any of her jumps. And, as she got off the ice in tears, her coach – who we will also get to – scolded her, saying, “Why did you give up? Why did you give up?”
She sobbed in the kiss and cry as her scores were read. She ended up scoring low enough that she was not on the podium at all. She was in fourth. So there would be a podium presentation, but it was not what you would have thought, because Trusova, her teammate, was also sobbing and screaming. At first it seemed like it might've been over everything happening with Valieva, but it turns out she was upset because she didn’t…She landed five quads, and yet was not in first place. The translations went something like, “I will never go on the ice again in my life. I hate this sport. I hate this sport. You can't do it this way.”
So, while the Russian team is dealing with Trusova and Valieva, Anna Shcherbakova, who won, is sitting there completely alone, holding a teddy bear that someone had thrown out onto the ice, staring out into the void. And this was the gold medal “celebration.” It got to the point where even Kaori Sakamoto, who was thrilled to get the bronze – she’s a Japanese skater – thrilled to get the bronze, she’s even shown sobbing. And I think just the emotion of everything just overtook her as well. And I've never seen anything…I’ve never, ever, ever, ever, ever seen anything like that.
Jessica: It was horrible.
Brenda: It was horrible. It was horrible to watch. And yet you wanted to watch, to know what the heck was going on and what they had, you know…Because it's hard to get to know them. And that's one of the things to start with, is that although Kamila Valieva was a favorite for the gold, for most of us she was pretty unknown, right? She had only been skating in the senior division I think for four months. She's 15. She moved to Moscow with her mother around the age of six from Kazan, about 500 miles away. And she trains in the well-known system run by a Eteri Tutberidze. Her training partner is Alexandra Trusova, who’s only two years older than her – the first woman to ever land a quad, period. So, we heard about Valieva being the first one to land in the Olympics. And Trusova…This might be part of why she was felt so upset, you know, is known as like the quad queen. And they trained together in this program. So even though so much of this has surrounded Kamila, Jessica, what do we know about this program?
Jessica: We know so much about it, and it's run by Eteri Tutberidze, this coach who is quote-unquote “controversial.” And the thing about her is she has a wake of young, injured Russian skaters behind her. She runs a school called Sambo 70 sports in Moscow, and she's famous for things like not letting her skaters drink water during competitions, trying to delay their puberty by making them only eat powdered nutrients. They are subjected to daily public weigh-ins and verbal and physical abuse. They will compete while injured, huffing smelling salts while wearing knee braces and collapsing in pain. Tutberidze also works with a controversial sports doctor, Filipp Shvetsky, who was barred from the Russian rowing team in 2007 after a doping investigation. He was seen alongside Valieva in October.
And then I just want to drive home the point of what this wake of skaters looks like. So, in 2014 – this is when Tutberidze and her school sort of burst onto the scene – Yulia Lipnitskaya, she was 15 at the time, won the gold medal at Sochi. Her final skating competition was when she was 17; retired at 19 because of prolonged injuries and struggles with anorexia. In 2018, two, Tutberidze was back. Alina Zagitova, also 15 years old, won the gold, went on an indefinite hiatus from the sport in December of 2019 when she was only 17, cited a hip injury. But she also had spoken of the difficulty of keeping up with these younger skaters who Tutberidze was training to do quads. She did return to training in mid 2020, but obviously didn't make the 2022 team. There's Evgenia Medvedeva, then 18, who won the silver in 2018. She competed with a cracked bone in her foot. She recently retired, saying at 22 that she has permanent back damage.
Tutberidze has had a skater retire at the age of 14 because of a severe back injury. The choreographer who works with Tutberidze one said that Anna Shcherbakova, who won the gold in Beijing, only ate two shrimp for dinner and then would say she was full, which he thought was very good. Alena Kostornaia, who is 18, did not compete in the Russian championship because she had a wrist fracture. Tutberidze thought she should have competed anyway. Daria Usacheva, who is 15 like Valieva, was injured in November during the warmup at a competition. She fractured her hip during the warmup and had to be carried off of the ice.
And then of course there's Valieva. And the thing that I really want to drive home about Tutberidze in all of this stuff is that it is deeply alarming to me that, had there not been a positive test for Valieva, there would not have been this kind of worldwide reaction and anger to Tutberidze, as if the only kind of abuse that could possibly matter here is doping this child and making things “unfair.” I just want to point out that, in 2020, the ISU, the international body that oversees figure skating, awarded Tutberidze coach of the year. Like, you look at those children that she has destroyed, and still the organization that oversees all of this gave her coach of the year because they win things and jump quads.
Brenda: Thank you for that list? [Jessica laughs] You see this pattern so clearly, if you even scratch the surface. This isn't hard to find. And if you look at these Russian competitions and national competitions, and you look at the European competitions and the Russian entries, you will see, “withdraw, withdraw, withdraw, withdraw, substitute, substitute” and it's all injuries. And their junior worlds and their seniors. So, I mean, I know it's a very trying sport, but still, this seems really extreme.
Lindsay: At the beginning of the Olympics, I tweeted something like, is there something specific in the Russian program that's allowing them to dominate like this? And do I even want to know the answer? Is it going to be really depressing? So, this is before the team competition even, right? This is the very beginning of the Olympics. My mentions were just flooded with figure skater followers sending me these articles about Tutberidze. This is way before the positive test! And I was like, I get it, you know?
Brenda: And from the interrogation and test results, it seems Valieva had several medications in her system that would seem very rare for a healthy teenager to be taking. The one that is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, is trimetazidine. So, we want to talk for a minute about what these drugs are. So, trimetazidine seems only to help performance of heart patients in normal life, right? And one of the reasons that these drugs get banned, even if they're not performance enhancing, is because of what they can mask. And that happens throughout sport, right? And mostly in horse racing we think about it, that some of these drugs either allow you to compete or train when you're hurt, or they can also even mask other drugs in drug tests.
So, you have to assume that dopers are five and six steps ahead of whatever we already know, right? And so the TMZ (trimetazidine), in any case, there's a lot of controversy about what it actually does. In terms of it being called a performance enhancing drug, it’s a little bit maybe of a misnomer. To understand, in the New York Times, for example, a cardiologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said, “The chance that trimetazidine would improve her performance is, in my opinion, zero.” And so there's that. However, there's still the idea of the long-term benefits she might have. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah. I think a lot of the talk has been about just allowing her to train for longer hours, not get tired as easily, and bounce back from really difficult training sessions easier. So it's not…You know, I think so often out thought of PEDs is like baseball, muscles hit farther, do you know what I mean? [laughs] Like the steroid, right? The very typical, like, one-to-one kind of ratio. But the truth is, like, there is a whole category of drugs that is kind of…They weren't created for performance enhancing abilities. A lot of them were created, like this – I'm gonna call it TMZ, which is the abbreviation – and also meldonium, which is a drug that people might be familiar with because it's what Maria Sharapova got her drug banned from in tennis. And these are heart medications, but athletes have discovered that they help with training sessions, with energy, with just pumping oxygen through the body easier. And you know, these Russian skaters are known for these 12 hour training sessions, right? Just being kind of indestructible, unable to feel fatigue.
And so I think that's a way that the drug has been known to benefit athletes, and also it’s really big and skating because endurance is such a big part of it, because you need to not only land these jumps, but you're given extra points if you land them at the back half of your routines, right? So, I agree, I think it's by far one of the less concerning things I've heard about this whole program, is like, you know, the fact that these drugs are being taken. But I also don't think that just because it's not like “this drug makes you do quads,” you know? That that means it's not concerning, because these drugs were not made for 15 year old figure skaters to take on an indefinite basis. We don't know the long-term side effects.
Jessica: Yeah, I think that's exactly it, Linz. Like, we know that she took the banned heart medicine, but also two other ones, that they created a cocktail for her. And they're experimenting on a 15 year old girl, is what it looks like from the outside. And everything else we know about Tutberidze is incredibly alarming.
Brenda: Yeah. Of course, initially she did say that…Or her team. I mean, again, when we're talking about a 15 year old, it’s really difficult to know what she constructed for herself, but there is the argument that it was her grandfather's heart medication, that she took a sip of water from a glass that he had drank from and accidentally ingested it. So we should just stay at that at this point that is their story in regard to how it got into her system.
Lindsay: But just a note on that, a great report from Yahoo, which we'll link, had an expert saying that actually the amount found in Valieva of that medication was roughly 200 times as much as was found in another athlete that it was proved to be contamination, right? So, another athlete did win on like the cross-contamination defense, but her dosage was 200 times that amount and it was very consistent with being kind of at the tail end of a dosage. And this sample was taken the day after she won the Russian national championship.
Brenda: And all of this feels more suspicious because it's another case in the decades-long history of Russian sport’s elaborate doping system. And it really got amped up – we should just give a little background – following their disappointing 2010 Olympics. So, they can't even compete technically as Russia. To save some of the good folks in the Russians sport?
Jessica: Yeah. So, we've talked about this on the show before. In 2014, in Sochi, as Russia was hosting the Olympics, they created an incredibly sophisticated statewide doping system. Icarus, the documentary, has great graphics where they literally show how they moved the samples around in order to switch them out. And there were athletes who were told by the government that you can't compete unless you dope. So, we're talking about like from the top down incredible corruption within the Russian Olympic Committee and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency around doping. And the IOC and WADA kind of gently slapped their hands [laughs] and it's been pretty remarkable what they were allowed to get away with. And here we are now.
Brenda: So, this is the second Winter Olympics that they've been competing as the Russian Olympic Committee.
Lindsay: And the third Olympics overall, I believe.
Jessica: And world cups, they compete as ROC as well.
Brenda: But they don't do a lot to disguise…It’s not like we’re confused. [laughs]
Jessica: No. I mean, the word Russian is in the name. The announcers say it. Apparently Tchaikovsky is the music when they do their medal ceremonies if they win gold. So, I mean, it's very, very Russian, the entire thing.
Lindsay: And like, Putin came to the opening ceremony!
Jessica: Yeah. They carved out an exception for him.
Brenda: I did want everyone to have to be like, you know, “Putin, president of the country of the Russian Olympic…” [laughs] I wish there was like a funny moniker underneath them.
Jessica: A huge chyron.
Brenda: Yeah.
Jessica: I mean, one thing I did want to mention is that in the aftermath of Sochi, WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, reinstated RUSADA, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency in 2018 – despite the fact that RUSADA did nothing to be reinstated. I feel like I burned this back at the time. They didn't admit fault. They didn't provide access to their lab. And then when RUSADA was supposed to turn over lab data to WADA in 2019, it appeared that RUSADA had manipulated critical data, data that was necessary to actually prosecute the cases. So they weren't actually able to take all the legal steps that they wanted to. And we'll get into this a little bit more, but just know that, moving forward, there will be an investigation into Valieva's doping, and it will be run by RUSADA, that agency. So, this is all complicated and bad.
Lindsay: The sample is taken on December 25th by RUSADA, and then we didn't know what it was until February 8th. It wasn't tested. That's because Russia’s not allowed to process their own samples! [laughs] So they had to send it to the lab in Stockholm.
Jessica: Yeah. Their lab was shut down in October by WADA. It's terrible.
Lindsay: [laughs] It’s staggering.
Jessica: Everything about this is just unbelievable, really.
Brenda: Well, and I think it's really fair to say, and we're gonna pivot to this right now, that Russia has depended upon the complicity of international organizations that are not Russian.
Jessica: And they just give it out, don't they? [laughs]
Brenda: Yeah. Let's start with the IOC, right? How did they react to the news of this positive test? In the beginning, we heard very little from the IOC themselves, only that they would not have a medal ceremony if Valieva was in the top three. So, they would give out torches instead of medals, and that this is some kind of stop gap solution. [laughs] It’s a labyrinthine structure, so we're just going to try to break it down a little bit. Most people think that the IOC alone is in charge of deciding if athletes compete or not compete that have these tests. And that's simply not quite the case. So here's where we get into the alphabet soup, and we try to like put the letters on a nice whiteboard with magnets or something and explain them.
So, the two bodies that we've been talking about is the World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA, and also CAS, or the Court of Arbitration of Sport, which is in Lausanne, Switzerland. Now, what gets really hairy is that WADA and CAS, who are supposed to be bodies above, to a certain extent, the IOC, that are supposed to govern this. So, WADA dealing specifically with international doping issues: both what's banned, what's not banned, what the disciplinary action is. And then you have CAS, the Court of Arbitration of Sport, which is in Switzerland, which is supposed to oversee everything, everything – not just IOC, but FIFA, you know, any international sport issue. And CAS is a bunch of lawyers – and here's where you should start to shift in your seat – that generally have experience working for the IOC, FIFA, and WADA. [laughs] Sometimes holding their positions concurrently, meaning you can both be on the executive council of FIFA, the IOC and CAS.
Jessica: How?!
Brenda: Because it's fun, these rotating terms. [laughs] It's fun stuff. And then you can be on a committee of one, but you're like the ex president, but you're not a voting member, but you're still in the room.
Jessica: So you're saying that CAS is not independent.
Brenda: I'm saying nobody's independent from one another, that these are generally very privileged, white European men – although we do have some new additions that might shake things up, a friend of the show, Moya Dodd, and some others – that generally are friends, that rotate positions on these different boards. And it's a very tight knit group. CAS was started in the 80s because of horse doping.
Jessica: Oh, wow.
Brenda: Yeah. So, CAS can arbiter two kinds of disputes: commercial disputes and disciplinary disputes. And those are the two kinds, but the disciplinary stems from horse doping. So anyway, that's a long and maybe boring thing, but just to give you a kind of background. It was formed by the IOC, so its very generation was the IOC wanting another body, and The Hague, the international criminal court. So, wild, right? And a lot of people were upset or shocked by CAS's decision. Jessica, do you want to speak to that for a moment?
Jessica: Yeah. So I think when we talk about alphabet soup, so, we've said this a lot, you know, she won on December 24th, gave her sample on December 25th to RUSADA, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. And this is part of it, is that there are all these individual national anti doping organizations, and countries are often left on their own to deal with doping within their own national federations. And so we have RUSADA get the sample; as Lindsay said, they can't test it themselves. They have to send it off. They say there's a bunch of COVID in the lab, so they can't test it. It doesn't come back until February 8th. I think she skated on the 7th.
And RUSADA is the one who gets the result, and they are the one, because they have to, suspend her, and then she immediately appeals it to the RUSADA disciplinary committee – they have their own acronym, I don't remember it now. And they're the ones who immediately overturn her provisional suspension, which, that…I listened to David Epstein on Hang Up and Listen from last week, and he's a doping expert in sport, and he was like, that is a shocker, like, that timeline alone is just unheard of, to make a decision that quickly. And so it went to CAS from there. It was actually the IOC, the ISU, which is the international figure skating organization, and WADA. They took RUSADA, Valieva and the ROC to CAS, saying they wanted her provisional suspension put back in place so she could not compete.
And CAS decided – they have an ad hoc committee that goes to the Olympics every year and sits around and waits for there to be issues that they need to deal with – and this ad hoc committee decided pretty quickly, you know, a couple of days, that they would keep the RUSADA provisional suspension. They would overturn it the way that RUSADA had, they’d keep that in place, and that she would get to compete. And they said that part of it was they felt like there would be irreparable harm to her if it came back that there was cross-contamination and she did not actually on purpose dope. But I think we all saw some irreparable harm anyway, so that alone is a very…It’s hard to know what to make of that.
Brenda: Linz?
Lindsay: So, after the horrific scene that I described at the top of the segment, it was interesting to me that Thomas Bach, the IOC president, gave this press conference where he spoke out against Valieva’s entourage, saying that they had tremendous coldness, and rather than giving her comfort they were giving her distance. And it was just kind of staggering, because yes, [laughs] this has always been the case. And, you know, he did say kind of what we all think, just like, what do we mean by irreparable harm? Like, was this whole situation not irreparable harm to literally every single person that was involved? Whereas just suspending her would almost have been protecting her in some ways from this.
And also, just a very quick side note: a Kremlin spokesman then responded to Bach's comment saying, “He does not like the toughness of our coaches, but everyone knows that in elite sports the coach’s toughness is key to the student's victory.” [Jessica groans] So, gotta get the Kremlin spokesperson in there defending the asshole coach! But this all comes down to: she’s 15. A huge reason why this was all overturned is because she's part of a protected class because she is so young. So that made it easier to overturn the suspension, but then it gets back to, like, what does protected even mean when we're talking about 15 year olds? Because once again, none of this is protection.
One of the most staggering things to me is Alysa Liu, who is an American figure skater, who's 16 years old. She won national championships in the US when she was only 13 and was the first US women's skater to land a quad in competition. She was doing triple axels consistently. And then she had a growth spurt, three inches, from 4’11” to 5’2”, and through puberty could no longer do the quads. She has now taking them out of our program and isn't training them right now. She talked about just having to let that go because of normal bodily changes. And she skated and she I think finished seventh. She skated wonderfully. It was beautiful. And seeing her smile and giggle and laugh and jump up and down after nailing her program and then comparing that to Valieva at 15 – and Alysa is only 16. It just put that 15 in perspective to me. And I think it raises the question of, like, should 15 year olds be competing?
Jessica: Yeah, no, they probably should not. And one of the things that I came across in looking into all of this is that, over the last few years, there's been pushes by other federations to actually up the age. They’ve pushed the ISU to do something about this. And of course the big group that is pushing back is Russia, because you can't do quads once you…Like, no one above the age of 17 or 18 can do a quad. It has to do with having that incredibly skinny, no hip look. The first time I saw Valieva in the team competition, I was upset. I was like, she's too thin. Like, there's something going on here that's not good. And then I learned all these things about her coach and it turned out that that is correct.
You know, eating disorders are part of that entire team. And I think the fact that WADA has to create an entire protected category for young athletes shows us that they shouldn't be competing at the senior level. Like, there's a reason. And watching all these girls cry after the final free skate, for all different kinds of reasons, just really drove home how young they all are.
Brenda: It would seem to make absolute sense to make the age 18.
Jessica: Yeah.
Brenda: But it's not only ice skating. Gymnastics has a very similar problem with this. And so, you know…And snowboarding, in fact, so, there's several. Yeah, Linz?
Lindsay: Part of the problem is just also though, then it just matters so much even more when you're born. Like, what if you're 17 at an Olympics and then the next Olympics you're 21 and you can't do these things anymore. Like, that's not a defense of it. It just exemplifies the pressures. Part of the reason why you see these skaters having these meltdowns is they don't feel like they can never get back to this point again.
Jessica: Yeah, but also these 15 year olds, they can’t. They can only do it this one time. We will not see these skaters ever again. Tara Lipinski won when she was 15, had hip surgery a few years later. Like, I don't think there's an easy answer with the four year cycle, the way that it is with all the pressure that we put on the Olympics and medaling in this four year cycle, that you're always going to come up against these kinds of issues with age.
Brenda: I think it's pretty easy, personally. Like, I think your brain development, your body development at 18, it's not worth it to me to see it quad if I've gotta see that aftermath, you know? I think for us three anyways, seeing that scene afterwards is like, you know, it's not worth it. Keep your quads or, you know, do them on your spare time and become a viral hit on YouTube or something. [laughs] You know what I mean? Like, it's just not worth it. I'm okay with like 18 and missing out on some spectacular stuff. I feel like they're gonna find a way to get it out there. But yeah, the pressure is not probably going to be turned off, as Lindsay said.
So, just to move away and finish the governance part, part of the governance is influenced of course by the culture of figure skating. And we have seen some really disturbing cases of sexual abuse in the sport, of untreated mental health issues in this sport. Ekaterina Alexandrovskaya, in Moscow, sadly, tragically committed suicide and a lot of people attributed it to very young mental health issues in both the Russian program, and then she switched and competed abroad. We had accountability problems with the John Coughlin cases that came to light a few years ago. So, I'm not saying that to get into this or anything in depth or to even treat it lightly, but yet to say there's pretty little transparency and accountability in this sport in a way that we've seen in others. Jessica?
Jessica: Yeah. So, I keep thinking about…I’m obviously working on this podcast about gymnastics, and I wrote about gymnastics recently, and sort of the go-to book that we all turn to is Joan Ryan's Little Girls in Pretty Boxes that was published in 1995, because it really did blow the whistle on abuse in gymnastics all those decades ago. We've talked about it a lot recently too because of Nassar and everything around it, but that book is also about figure skating. And so she was saying these things about figure skating also back in 1995. So, the idea that any of this is new, like, when I think about Thomas Bach being up there and being…Like, this isn’t new, man! You know this as well as the rest of us. And I think that part of it really gets to me.
Brenda: Well, finally, I want to ask, and I'm glad to have journalists. What were your thoughts about the media's handling of this? The people at the center, interlocutors for a US audience, were Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir.
Jessica: I actually had a lot of trouble with it in general. I think on air they handled it okay, talking about it. But it was very clear, again, I was uncomfortable from the moment I saw Valieva skating. And at that point in the team competition, Johnny and Tara were just so excited about these Russian girls throwing quads and what this was going to mean and how just so exciting this whole thing was, and they were clearly going to ride the Russia train right to the end, if they were able to. And so I think that that kind of shift in tone to the shock and the disappointment and the sadness…I’m sure they felt those things. I'm not doubting that, actually. But also, they’re enmeshed in the sport too. Johnny went to Sambo 70, hung out with Tutberidze in I want to say November of last year, had a bunch of Instagram posts about how exciting that place is and how great it is.
I just think they weren't going to ever say anything about what was happening to these little girls if they weren't forced to. And that really bums me out. And they also didn't really talk a lot about the coach. There was a lot of sort of talking around her instead of about her, when they really did have the opportunity to say something definitive and clear about what we know, you know? There's ways to say things you know without casting full blame here. And they didn't take that opportunity.
Lindsay: I just want to say one thing quick about a media narrative that got really blown up by everyone, which was the comparisons to the Sha’Carri Richardson doping case. Of course, Richardson was unable to compete in the Olympics last year because marijuana was found in her system and she had that marijuana right after her mother died. Obviously she was definitely the victim of racist policies and bullshit, and marijuana should not be a banned substance, and she has the right to feel every bit of anger and frustration with the system that she feels. But I think for the media to take her words and just boil this down to just “white girl gets to compete, Black girl doesn’t,” you know, and just racism. I think it does a disservice to the story, and it made me really, really, really angry, because this was not about what was best for Kamila Valieva, right? Like, at all.
And I just think that when the media boils it down to just like a meme that they know will go viral and get a lot of clicks, it leaves a lot of people off the hook. So, both cases are awful. Both cases are tragic. Both cases scream the need for reform. I just don't think it's as simple as a one-on-one comparison. There's a lot of differences between the cases, and I don't want to leave all the people who fucked up in the Valieva situation off the hook. Like, it's just bullshit.
Brenda: Well, whether it’s the case of Caster Semenya or Sha’Carri Richardson or Kamila Valieva, we should definitely not let them off the hook for any of it, and remember the ways in which time and time again these people who are really close knit continue to make really sexist and racist and harmful decisions for both underage athletes and adults. This week, our interview is going to be amazing. Shireen interviews Billy Bridges, the Para Olympian, gold medal sledge hockey legend. And now it's time for everybody's favorite part of Burn It All Down. We are going to take all the garbage that happened in sports this week and metaphorically light it on fire. Linz, can you start us off?
Lindsay: Yeah. I’ll be really quick here. Michele Tafoya, onto the burn pile with you. Tafoya was a prominent woman in sports broadcasting. You know, I think she had a lot of firsts, a very prominent sideline reporter, and was a sideline reporter for the Super Bowl, and then had announced that she was going to retire after the Super Bowl. It came out that she is retiring after a decades-long career in sports in order to be the co-chair of a political campaign for businessmen and army veteran Kendall Qualls, who is running as a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota. And she has been on the Tucker Carlson show this past week and all over Fox News talking about why she's transitioning from reporting on football to politics. It's because she wants to “say what she believes, take a stand.”
What is her stand? Well, part of it is “being a voice against critical race theory and other radically progressive policies.” Among the things she said this week is that she's so mad at everyone for “teaching that skin color matters,” and also that Colin Kaepernick could have a job in the NFL if he wanted one, but that he had made choices to decide not to. Just think this is a good reminder to always remember who is telling these stories. We have no room or no space for this white woman feminism to the extreme, and the mask is off. She's off the sideline. She's into the rain. She's going to be everywhere, and there's going to be a lot of, “Wow women not supporting women.” And no, I do not support Michele Tafoya and what she's doing. How you can work alongside Black athletes and Black co-workers for that many years and your response is “I need to fight against critical race theory and teach colorblindness.” You're dumb. You're dumb as shit. I'm sorry. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Jessica?
Jessica: Last week, ESPN’s Don Van Natta reported that the Dallas Cowboys paid a confidential settlement of $2.4 million in May 2016 to four Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders who reported that Richard Dalrymple, the team's longtime senior vice president for public relations and communications, had filmed them in 2015 during the Cowboys' annual kickoff luncheon at AT&T Stadium while they were changing their clothes in their locker room. That settlement came with a nondisclosure agreement in which the four women, three of their spouses, and Cowboys officials all agreed never to talk about this again. Additionally, Van Natta reported, “Dalrymple was also accused by a lifelong Cowboys fan of taking upskirt photos of Charlotte Jones Anderson, a team senior vice president, and the daughter of team owner, Jerry Jones.”
In the Cowboys’ war room during the 2015 NFL draft, according to documents obtained by ESPN and interviews, the fan signed an affidavit that he was watching a live stream of the war room on the team's website when he said he saw the alleged incident. So the team did an internal investigation and, you'll be surprised to learn, found that Dalrymple had entered the locker room but had not filmed the women. Quote, “The investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing.” Still, curiously, the team issued him a formal written warning in October of 2015, and of course paid out $2.4 million.
Dalrymple stayed with the team for six more years until, also curiously, ESPN started to ask questions about what happened in 2015. From Van Natta, quote, “On February 2nd, he told the Dallas Morning News of his immediate retirement after 32 years as Jerry Jones’ chief spokesman and confidant. While Dalrymple thanked the team and the Jones family, no one on behalf of the team acknowledged his years of service, and his retirement was not mentioned on the team's website. His retirement came several weeks after ESPN began interviewing people about the alleged incidents, and just days after ESPN contacted attorneys involved in the settlement.” In his statement, Dalrymple said, “The allegations had nothing to do with my retirement from a long and fulfilling career, and I was only contacted about the story after I had retired.” Okay, bro.
The NFL quickly announced that they would not be investigating the Cowboys because the club had handled it, and the league is just fine with how they did that. We know, from the slew of Jon Gruden emails that got leaked from the investigation into the Washington NFL Team, that the then president of the team, Bruce Allen, exchanged emails with Gruden of women wearing only bikini bottoms, including two cheerleaders for that team. We also know that the NFL refuses to do anything of substance to Dan Snyder, the owner of Washington, whose underlings have repeatedly exploited that team's cheerleaders, including producing lewd videos of the cheerleaders without their knowledge.
As plenty of people on social media pointed out this week, this news about Dalrymple and the big shrug from the Cowboys and the league are a good indication for why the other team owners in the league have not come down that hard on Washington. The entire culture is fucked, and no one wants anyone to be held accountable lest everyone be held accountable. This is all shameful, and it's unsurprising. I still though want to burn it. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: This is a burn to put on the burn pile for probably the first and not the last time, which is in regard to the Portland Timbers player and Peruvian national player Andy Polo. About nine months ago, apparently, the police were called to Andy Polo's house in order to investigate an intimate partner violence and other possible familial violence situations. We don't know much at all beyond the fact that his partner and his children have returned to Peru. She went on national television and explained the situation, showed photos and images. And apparently what we've learned…And I hate to use “apparently” – it's not because I'm calling into question his partner's testimony, but in fact because we really just don't have it yet. But what has come to the surface is that the Timbers sent HR people to the scene and then did not publicly acknowledged that this had happened. And as this case unravels, as people are learning more and more about it, it seems that they interfered with the investigation at several points.
MLS has now contracted a law firm to help them with this. And I guess what I'm burning for this moment, because it's the one thing I do know, is that there's not good policies in regard to this in MLS and in US Soccer Federation. There’s not an independent body that one could go to. At first, he was immediately suspended. Now that it's been eight months later and this has come to the surface, and then his contract the day after was canceled, terminated. We've talked a lot on the show about centering victims and survivors. We've talked a lot about ways in which to do this, and unfortunately the MLS has just no clue what it's doing. You know, some law firm that they hired – that is the same that the NFL hired – is not going to come up with anything great for anybody. So, I want to burn what we know thus far, and the standing impunity that has happened for years and years around this within these organizations. So, burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Okay. So, after the burning and after a really rough segment, it's going to feel good to talk about our torchbearers of the week. For honorable mentions – and I have to mention that Shireen already has a hot take up on this – the Canadian women's hockey team defeated the United States, has won the gold medal in women's hockey. For all of that content, please go to wherever you get Shireen [laughter] and read up on it. Congratulations to the team, a fantastic rivalry. Jessica?
Jessica: With her bronze medal in the two woman bobsled, Elana Meyers Taylor earned her fifth Olympic medal and became the most decorated Black Winter Olympian ever, and the most decorated woman to ever compete in Olympic bobsled. We love Elana Meyers Taylor on Burn It All Down, and we are so proud of her.
Brenda: And check out interviews with her by our own Jessica Luther to hear all about it. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah. Eileen Gu, the first action sports athlete to capture three medals at the same Winter Games. Additionally, she's the first free skier or snowboarder to win a medal in both half pipe and big air or slopestyle – not just at the same Olympics, but ever! What a two weeks she just had. [laughs]
Brenda: Oh yeah. Jessica?
Jessica: Everett Fitzhugh and JT Brown made history last week when they became the first all-Black broadcast team to call an NHL game when they covered the Seattle Kraken’s road game against the Winnipeg Jets. Here is Fitzhugh calling Seattle's first goal…
Brenda: Lia Thomas won three events and set five records at the Ivy League swimming championships en route to the NCAA championships. Definitely make sure you catch Linz’s interview with Julie Kliegman from last week for more on Thomas, a trans woman athlete whose path to the championships has not been easy, and we can expect will continue to face obstacles from transphobic folks. And now, can I get a drumroll, please?
[drumroll]
Our torchbearer of the week – Lindsay, who is it?
Lindsay: It’s Sarah Nurse. Woo! So, Sarah Nurse is on Team Canada’s ice hockey team. There has never been another Black woman on any Olympic ice hockey team, ever. Which is wild. And so that means she's the first to win gold, [laughs] but she wasn't just like on the team winning it. She set a scoring record with 18 points in seven games played, including two points in the gold medal game. Her +19 plus-minus was also the highest ever for a forward, I'm guessing in the Olympics, but I don’t know. [laughter] Anyways, it's all really good!
Brenda: Yay!
Lindsay: I’ll be honest, I don’t know what the proper context is for that stat! Sarah Nurse, you are the torchbearer, and we love it. [laughs]
Brenda: In dark times, we like to talk about what's good in our world. Lindsay?
Lindsay: February's been rough for me mental-health-wise for really no good reason, except I think February, you know? [laughs] I think it's just a tough month. And it is supposed to be 60 degrees and sunny. So I woke up this morning and I was going to go for a walk this morning with Mo, because that's my new thing, is to try and get up every morning and go on a walk. But it was 30 this morning and I realized that it was gonna be 65, so I got a couple of hours of work done before we recorded so that I can hopefully end work early today and go for a walk in the sun! And so that's kind of keeping me going, got me rejuvenated, that it's not going to be freezing forever.
Brenda: [sighs] To beat 30 degrees. [laughs] Jessica?
Jessica: Oh no. I won't tell you all what it's supposed to be here today. [laughs] Obviously, American Prodigies is what's good. Super proud of this work. Aaron got a sneak preview a couple of weekends ago of the first two episodes. He listened to it on his run – he does long runs on Saturday – and he came home...He was so cold that his tongue was swollen because he had gotten caught in a hailstorm. Yes, yes. But anyway, he was so excited that even with his swollen tongue, he needed to tell me how much he enjoyed the podcast. So, that was such a treat for me and it's just made me even more excited for people to hear it.
The other thing is that the MLS season is already starting and Aaron and I are going to go on Saturday to the home opener for Austin FC. I got us really good seats, so we're going to be three rows off the pitch. And so I'm excited. I hate the new mint uniforms, but I will just learn to deal with it. I'm excited to be in the stadium and cheer. Hopefully they'll score. They were terrible at scoring last year, [laughs] but of course they had lots of changes to the roster. So I'm really looking forward to just being in that.
Brenda: That's amazing. And look for Austin FC supporters groups to have a lot of drama that is really intricate and petty and fun to look at. Go and follow all of them. They're so passionate.
Jessica: I’m in all those groups. [laughs]
Brenda: They’re so passionate. They are really lovely. I really dig it. From the outside, it’s not stressful either. I'm just like, meh, so I just get to enjoy their inner workings.
Jessica: They all care very much. [laughs]
Brenda: Hell yeah. Yeah, one might say way too much, but I think from a feminist sports podcast, we probably aren't in the position to judge. I was excited because Saturday it was snowy here, surprisingly so, and I went to the zoo with my kids and I saw a snowy owl in the snow, which, I don't know why that made me really excited. I was like, it's a snowy owl and it's snowing on the snowy owl! And it was so beautiful, and I really dug it.
Jessica: Wow.
Lindsay: [laughs] That’s so pure. That's like the purest thing I’ve ever heard Brenda say! Who are you!? [laughter]
Brenda: I like animals! I like animals, for the most part. [laughter] I mean, the ones that don’t suck, like kangaroos. I mean, I don’t like kangaroos. I hope that alligators go extinct–
Jessica: Brenda Elsey! [laughs]
Brenda: I have a list of what can get extinct, but not snowy owls. [laughs] They are so cute and fluffy looking. And smart. Somehow I bought into the whole thing that they're secretly smart and know what I'm saying, but I've read that that's not true. Anyway, that's what's good. And it was lovely, and I am very aware of issues around zoos and conservation. So, just to say, I'm not full on advocating nor an expert in zoo politics, but I enjoyed it with my kids on Saturday in the snow. And we, at the end of every show, talk about what we're watching, but I just real quick want to ask, what are we listening to this week, Jessica Luther?
Jessica: American Prodigies season three, hosted by our own Amira Rose Davis has dropped!
Lindsay: Yay!
Brenda: Woo woo! [clapping]
Jessica: You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts. I am so proud of this project. Episode one features Olympic silver medalist Jordan Chiles, and it'll be in your feed for the next eight weeks. So, please go subscribe now.
Brenda: Awesome. So excited, and we're so proud of our co-hosts. And this week we are watching, in somewhat overlapping and confusing tournaments, women's soccer. That includes the CONCACAF qualifiers, as well as the She Believes Cup, which features tomorrow at 9:00pm – if you're listening to this on Tuesday, that is Wednesday. The US versus Iceland and New Zealand versus the Czech Republic at 6:00pm. It is also the final week of Athletes Unlimited basketball season, and the Champs League also has a game, a good matchup tomorrow at 3:00pm: Atlético de Madrid versus Man United. Of course, our own Amira will be very pro-Man United, and Shireen and I never ever want them to win. So, that's fun. [laughs] You can pick one of our sides. I think Amira's got the advantage on this one.
Okay, that is it for this episode of Burn It All Down. This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Also listen, subscribe and rate our show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com, and you'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. Thank you, thank you, thank you to our patrons. As always, your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. I'm Brenda Elsey, and on behalf of Lindsay Gibbs and Jessica Luther this week, and always, burn on and not out.