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Out of the carnage of the Kamila Valieva doping storm, one key associate is still roaming free at the Winter Olympics. Suffice to say, the presence of Eteri Tutberidze here in Milan has stirred some consternation.
‘If you ask me personally, I didn’t feel comfortable with her presence here at the Olympic Games for sure,’ was the summary on Thursday of Witold Banka, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Banka’s agency was front and centre of the prosecution effort at Beijing 2022, where Valieva, aged 15 and a posterchild of Russian sport, became embroiled in one of the most troubling scandals the Games has ever known.
Her positive test for banned heart medication, which emerged two days after she led Russia to team gold in China, triggered a suspension that elapsed only six weeks ago.
Her competitive enterprises this week will be limited to the Russian Jumping Championships in Moscow, so her sentence was prolonged, even if she was paraded as a wronged hero by Vladimir Putin.
Tutberidze’s path has been substantially clearer. She was never implicated in the doping of a child and no evidence was ever found, with Valieva’s legal team protesting that the skater accidentally consumed her grandfather’s medication.
Eteri Tutberidze (left), the coach of doping scandal skater Kamila Valieva (centre), is an uncomfortable presence at the 2026 Games
Tutberidze, officially, is not working with any Russian athlete at these Games, and no evidence was found that she was involved in the doping scandal
Tutberidze is working with Georgia’s European champion skater Nika Egadze (left)
Given Russia’s history in doping, and the subsequent finding that Valieva was subjected to a regime of 56 legal supplements and medications, scepticism has greeted every counter-claim. It is why, rightly or wrongly, eyebrows are still raised in the direction of those who existed in her orbit, Tutberidze included.
Having split with Valieva, it is understood this formidable coach has been accredited here as part of the Georgian delegation and is working with their European champion skater Nika Egadze.
Neither the International Olympic Committee nor the International Skating Union responded to requests for confirmation around her affiliations, but she has been seen at the skating venue.
Intriguingly, she also has a coaching relationship with 18-year-old Adeliia Petrosian, the latest Russian hope and one of 13 from that nation vetted to compete in Milan. The official version is they are not working together at the Games.
Asked by Daily Mail Sport about the awkwardness of Tutberidze’s involvement in Italy, Banka shared his discomfort but added: ‘It is not our decision – the coach is here, the investigation found no evidence that this particular person was engaged in this doping. So there is no legal basis to exclude her.’
He added: ‘I think as a result of this situation, not only this situation, there were changes of the (WADA) code. We strengthened the rules. We put a lot of emphasis on entourage with a mandatory investigation when a minor is involved. There are many new regulations and rules in the code that address this issue.’
That much is true. But the stain of that saga remains fresh in the memory, with circumstances unlike any other, even in the storied history of Russian doping scandals.
The Daily Mail’s own involvement in the wider saga four years ago amounted to a strange and surreal footnote.
It was at the height of the Beijing debacle that the Russian-born coach drew fire from then-IOC president Thomas Bach owing to her stony reaction to Valieva’s distress in the singles final
Valieva was celebrated as a wronged hero in Russia, and lauded by President Vladimir Putin
Tutberidze has a coaching relationship with 18-year-old Adeliia Petrosian, the latest Russian hope and one of 13 from that nation vetted to compete in Milan
It was two days after Valieva starred in the team final that she was named as the mystery athlete who had tested positive for trimetazidine, and a further two before she resurfaced at a practice session ahead of the singles final the following Tuesday.
After she had finished her workout, Valieva headed through the interview area and I requested a comment from her, which was the cue for a peculiar social media storm.
A handful of Russian stooges, notionally there as reporters, had taken a picture of my accreditation and posted it online.
Quickly the tale was being positioned in Russian news outlets with a curious stance – more about the callous western journalist and less about the mechanics of how their star athlete had tested positive and why.
Within hours, a number of bot accounts had diverted the outrage in my direction and a pile-on ensued – thousands of comments were forthcoming across the next week, the most interesting of which speculated that I enjoyed eating baby pandas.
Along with a smattering of death threats that were investigated and deemed unserious, it felt like a peculiar diversion around the saddest and most jolting of stories.
An observation at the time centred on how isolated Valieva appeared that day at the practice session. None of her entourage was there to speak for her to the media; no one, Tutberidze included, stepped in to shield a kid at the centre of a scandal.
What followed in that singles final is a matter of record. Valieva had been flawless in winning team gold, which was later stripped, but was ruined by the pressures of the noise around her when she came back for the individual. She fell twice and finished fourth.
Valieva had been flawless in winning team gold, which was later stripped, but was ruined by the pressures of the noise around her when she came back for the individual
None of her entourage was there to speak for her to the media; no one, Tutberidze included, stepped in to shield a kid at the centre of a scandal
As she left the ice in tears, Tutberidze asked her: ‘Why did you let it go? Why did you stop fighting?’
Even in the hyper-competitive world of skating, it felt brutally cold. Thomas Bach, the then-IOC president, was among those shocked, describing it as ‘chilling to see’ and an act of ‘tremendous coldness’.
Tutberidze sought an apology for his ‘unfair’ comments. It was requested from thin ice.