Connect the dots, from Guatemala to Beijing: (long tweet string follows)
1. Guatemala City, 2007. The IOC chooses host for 2014 Winter Games. To boost Sochi bid, Russia brings equipment for an ice rink. President V. Putin flies in to address IOC, even speaks English (rare for him in public.) Sochi wins.
2. Soon after, Russian sports officials get diktat: person(s) in high places expect boatload of Russian medals in Sochi. Infusion of government financial support follows. Fits into Putin aim to make Russia world power again politically and athletically.
3. Traditional figure skating power Russia (née Soviet Union) does poorly in 2010 Oly. No pairs medal for first time since 1960 (first USSR Winter Games participation.) Top women's singles skater ninth. No gold in any event for first time
4. The first call Thomas Bach takes after being elected International Olympic Committee president in 2013 is from Putin.
5. “Incentive” to do well at Sochi Games brings gold in four of five figure skating disciplines, missing only men’s singles, where lone entry, Evgeni Plushenko, does team event but withdraws from individual.
6. Russia wins 33 medals in Sochi, more than double its total (15) from 2010.
7. Whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov tells New York Times in 2016 about elaborate scheme to switch dirty samples for clean ones at the Sochi lab.
8. The IOC slaps Russia on the wrist over doping for the first of several times, using the one-bad-apple rationalization. IOC lets international sports feds decide which Russian athletes can compete at 2016 Rio Summer Games
9. Track & Field fed bans Russia from Rio but Russia still sends 284 athletes in other sports and finishes fourth in medal count.
10. A Russian figure skating coach, Eteri Tutberdidze, has student Alina Zagitova cleverly exploit a skating rule that allows all jumps in the second half of a program, where they get 10% bonus. Zagitova does just that, and bonuses play heavily into her margin of victory
11. After a World Anti-Doping Agency-commissioned report reveals massive state-sponsored doping in Russia, the IOC applies a symbolic ban for the 2018 Olympics. (No flags, no anthem.) Russian athletes compete as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”
12. No one is fooled by the new acronym, OAR.
13. Russia realizes the IOC has no intention of levying a real sanction, even as more doping evidence piles up. The subsequent IOC “bans” for 2020/21 Tokyo and 2022 Beijing mean they compete as “Russian Olympic Committee.”
14. No one is fooled by the new acronym, ROC.
15. Tutberidze exploits figure skating’s scoring system, which gives huge rewards to landing quadruple jumps. For women, pre-pubescent bodies make it much easier to do the jumps.
16. Manufacturing quadsters on a pitiless conveyor belt, Tutberidze’s young teen skaters utterly dominate women’s skating globally on senior and junior levels in seasons between 2018 and 2022 Olympics.
17. Attrition rate (injury, burnout) of these skaters is alarming but apparently irrelevant to Tutberidze (and Russian sports authorities,) because there are dozens more where they came from.
18. In Russian TV interviews, Tutberidze & team not hesitant to discuss how demanding (some would say ruthless) their training methods are, how closely they watch skaters’ weight and diet (coaches boast of how little food some eat.)
19. Asked after finishing second in the Beijing short program about staying in that environment, 2021 world champion Anna Shcherbakova, 17, a Tutberidze student, effectively said her staying was the answer:
20. Shcherbakova: “I've been in Eteri's group since I was 9. I've been training under her. If I'm not changing coaches, it means I like this coach. Our partnership has been very fruitful.”
21. Suggestions abound over the past several yearsthat Tutberidze’s methods also included what the East Germans used to call “supporting means.” Evidence circumstantial until. . .
22. . . .Kamila Valieva, 15, the most prodigiously talented skater in years, tests positive for a banned substance in a sample given Christmas Day.
23. It is hard to imagine (but not impossible) that a 15-year-old asked for this drug on her own.
24. Dots connected, but many, many blanks left to fill in.
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Mea culpa: it was 3, not 4. Yes. The point made is the same, whether 3 or 4…a lot more than 0 four years earlier.
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