By Polina Nikolskaya
MOSCOW (Reuters) – She has been on the ice since she was a toddler. By age 5, Kamila Valieva was landing double Salchows and by 8 she was stunning audiences with her choreography and talking to her coaches like an adult.
Now, just days after Valieva, 15, landed the first ever quadruple jump by a woman in the Olympics Games, that entire career hangs in the balance over a failed doping test.
Sport’s highest court on Monday allowed Valieva to continue competing in the Beijing Olympics. But if she places in the top three at Thursday’s women’s singles event, no medals will be awarded until her doping case is ultimately resolved.
Her childhood former coaches said they hope the talent and drive that got Valieva this far would get her through her biggest challenge yet.
Ksenia Ivanova could already see something extraordinary in Valieva when the three-year-old girl’s parents brought her in to train in Kazan, in southern Russia.
“She already knew how to skate. The girl was gifted. It was immediately visible, promising. And they were working at it: skated in the morning, skated in the afternoon, skated in the evening, practiced wherever possible.”
“At the age of four, she started jumping on the ice. At five, double Salchow, double toe loop,” Ivanova told Reuters.
“She was ahead of schedule, she was going faster than her peers. Well, she is a brilliant child in talent, in hard work, in ability. That is, there is talent, plus ability, plus desire.”
Within a few years, Valieva had outgrown provincial Kazan and moved to Moscow to train. Her family was never wealthy, and her mother worked hard to support the young prodigy’s future career.
“She was just eight years old. But she was so special,” recalls Igor Lutikov, her coach for the next two years.
“She was advanced – and not just in sport. She talked like a grown-up,” Lutikov said. “Such a person is one-in-a-million.
“She is kind, cheerful, sympathetic, friendly. She’s talkative.” But also steely. Up at 6:45 a.m., heading alone to the rink, spending five to six hours a day training on the ice.
When she had a conflict with older skaters that led to a fight in the locker room, she told her coach nothing: “She was only a little kid but already silent as a partisan,” Lutikov said.
Careers in figure skating, particularly for women, are brief. Once fully grown, many are no longer the right shape to land the big jumps that win tournaments.
Both former coaches said they had trouble believing Valieva was to blame for the failed doping test from December that came to light after she helped the Russian Olympic Committee win teams gold.
“I don’t believe any of this stuff that’s being said,” said Lutikov. “I think it’s a misunderstanding.”
Said a sympathetic Ivanova, “I can’t even imagine what Kamila is experiencing with all this. But I hope that she will endure everything, everything will pass, everything will turn out as a success.”
(Reporting by Polina Nikolskaya; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
