Before we begin: This is just a thought piece--I'm not an academic or an expert. I'm hardly the only one to think in these terms. If you want a more professional take on this, try this Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/feb/11/kamila-valieva-zhu-yi-victims-winter-olympics-puppet-theatre-pain-beijing-2022. I can also suggest the documentary Icarus on Netflix about the state-run Russian doping scheme. There are also plenty of books about this type of topic that you can seek out for a more in-depth treatment.
It's hard to believe that it's been only about three weeks since the world was riveted by the drama of the ladies' figure skating competition. Coming into the competition, the heavy (heavy) favorite was another in a long line of teenaged Russian phenoms, 15-year-old Kamila Valieva. Admittedly, I don't follow figure skating, but the first I heard of Valieva was a few weeks prior to the Olympics during an NBC broadcast of another competition. The commentators gushed. Fast-forward a few weeks, and Valieva is competes in the team segment of the figure skating competition, delivering two stellar performances that garner Russia a bounty of points. Team Russia ends up winning the team competition.
Except, wait. They weren't "Team Russia". They were the "Russian Olympic Committee". Which of course makes such a massive difference--or, you know, not. The reason these Russian athletes couldn't compete as "Russia" and couldn't display the Russian flag or hear the Russian national anthem played when they received medals is that Russia was under sanction for having cheated in 2014. Russian athletes were caught doping. What's more, it wasn't just individual athletes: the Russian sports aparatus was running a massive scheme to give their athletes an unfair advantage and to hide that fact from anti-doping agencies. The punishment? Just a change in nomenclature and the suppression of the Russian flag and national anthem. But let's be real, everyone knew these were Russian athletes, and it's not like anyone in any position of power in Russia actually cared.
This was not a real punishment.
Which is pretty obvious when return to the 2022 Olympics. Because, after the team competition, it was discovered, after a suspiciously long delay, that Valieva had tested positive back in December for a banned substance. Meaning, she should have been banned starting in December, and her ban should have included the Olympic Games. But she wasn't banned, because the sample wasn't tested until the middle of the Olympic Games, and when it was discovered she tested positive, the Russian doping agency banned her and then--predictably--lifted the ban as soon as she appealed. After a wee bit of wrangling, which amounted to nothing, the IOPC, ISU, and Court for the Arbitration of Sport all failed to ban Valieva. She went on to compete as an individual, and, under intense pressure, the fifteen-year-old imploded spectacularly. Her coach yelled at her for being a "failure", the Russian silver-medalist (Trusova) threw a tantrum because she felt she was robbed of gold, the Russian gold-medal winner (Shcherbakova) was left alone and somewhat sheepish by herself, and the world was aghast. Meanwhile, the Japanese bronze medalist, Sakamoto, wept with joy.
Holy smokes. What a circus.
And three weeks later, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
There's a direct through-line here. It's not a simple, straight line, of course, but it's all part and parcel of the same thing: a Cold War mentality.
Let's get one thing clear: Putin knew about the state-run doping scheme. By virtue of it being state-run, he knew about it. Even if he didn't direct it himself or know the details, he knew of it and approved of it. Let's also be clear, the way these athletes are treated is straight out of the Soviet play-book (Putin loves the Soviet play-book; it's his favorite). The mentality was this: we are at odds with the West, and instead of actual warfare, we will use the sporting arena as our battlefield. Superior athletes meant a superior social and political system. The Soviets were hell-bent on exhibiting their social and political superiority, and sport was, during the Cold War, much (much) more than sport. It was an allegory, just like the figure skating fiasco of 2022 was.
[And while we're at it, think about this. The 2014 Russian doping scheme was uncovered, and there were no real consequences. Putin invaded Ukraine (Crimea) in 2014, and there were no real consequences. Russian athletes were still doping in 2022, and there were no real consequences. Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, thinking--not all that surprisingly, really--that there would be no real consequences.]
Watching the drama unfold at the Winter Olympics, I couldn't help thinking of Cold War drama during the Summer Olympics in my favorite sport, gymnastics. (To some degree, we are still fighting the Cold War in gymnastics, but, to be fair, it isn't quite the same as in figure skating.) The 60s, 70s, and 80s saw some pretty hard-core Cold War shenanigans in women's gymnastics (I'll be focusing on the women).
The Soviets were far and away the best women's gymnastics team from the 60s until the fall of the Soviet Union (and slightly thereafter). (Yes, Romania gave them a run for their money on several occasions.) The Soviet gymnasts were incredibly skilled acrobatically and artistically. While I love, say, Simone Biles, there is nothing like a Soviet floor routine. This is important to keep in mind, especially when considering how dominant Russia has been in figure skating over the past decade. The Soviet team won every Olympic team gold medal from 1952 until 1992, except for the boycotted Olympics in 1984. They won nearly all the Worlds team competitions, too, not to mention a huge portion of the all-around and individual events medals. It wasn't just medals, either. They were demonstrably better. This is very much akin to the recent years in which young female Russian skaters have dominated (and yes, it's no coincidence that young women and girls are the ones being exploited in both cases).
Perhaps the most prominent example of Cold War politics is the protest of Czechoslovakian gymnast Věra Čáslavská. Not long before the 1968 Mexico City Games, the Soviet Union had invaded her county, Czechoslovakia, and Čáslavská had opposed the invasion. During the Olympics, she appeared to have won the floor exercise gold medal, but then the score of a Soviet gymnast was amended so that, conveniently, that Soviet gymnast was tied with Čáslavská for the gold. This was a pretty obvious political game. During the awards ceremony, Čáslavská pointedly looked down and to the right when the Soviet national anthem played. As a result, when she returned home, she was no longer allowed to compete and was an official outcast.
A brief video of the protest (not mine, so no guarantee the link will remain live):
At the following Olympics, the world met Olga Korbut, a Soviet pixie with daring skills and a winning smile (she was/is Ukrainian, by the way). When she broke into tears after faltering on bars, those in the West expressed surprise that a Soviet could cry. This seems like a positive bridge between East and West, but it's important to keep in mind what was going on behind the iron curtain: Olga has indicated that she was emotionally and sexually abused, and that that winning smile was carefully choreographed.
Olga, 1972:
In 1980, the Olympics were in Moscow, and the U.S. boycotted. In retaliation, the Soviets boycotted in 1984 when the Olympics were in Los Angeles. This meant a lost generation on both sides, and a lot of unanswerable questions, especially regarding 1984. Could Mary Lou Retton have become all-around champion if the Soviets were there? Probably not, but we'll never know for sure. It's important to note that neither side was actually barred from any competitions during the Cold War; these were voluntary boycotts. Currently, Russia is barred from any International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) competitions.
By 1992, the Soviet Union was already defunct, but the former Soviets competed together as the Unified Team, and they won. But here's something of a legacy from the Soviet era: in 92, Rosa Galieva qualified for the all-around but was pulled because of an "injury" in favor of her teammate Tatiana Gutsu, who hadn't qualified because of an error on beam. Gutsu ended up winning the all-around. In the world of gymnastics to be "Galieva'd" is sometimes used as a verb--it means getting yanked from a final in favor of a teammate who failed to qualify but is more likely to win a medal. It's not really fair, but it didn't matter.
That's part and parcel of the culture of the Soviet sports. While gymnasts weren't drugged in the same way that athletes were in other sports (and in the same way as what happened in East Germany), it was a brutal atmosphere. Girls in their early teens were starved and beaten and berated. Many had their ages falsified so they could compete earlier. (This is all eerily similar to the coaching style of Russia's "star" figure skating coach Eteri Tutberidze.) One example of Soviet coldness is the treatment of Elena Mukhina. She was pushed extremely hard by Soviet coaches, so that when she fell on her neck and was rendered a quadriplegic, her first thought was Thank God I don't have to go to the Olympics. Not only that, but the Soviets refused to acknowledge that she was badly injured. Mukhina apparently had fans writing to her hoping she would be competing again soon.
Mukhina, 1978 Worlds (that full-twisting Korbut on bars!):
This training documentary is beautiful in some ways but also heartbreaking. It focuses on Mukhina, who couldn't look any sadder:
This culture spread beyond the Soviet Union. It was very much the same in communist Romania, and that culture came to the United States (though modified) with Bela and Martha Karolyi. It's only very recently that this has started to change in gymnastics. The sport has had something of a reckoning. It doesn't look as if it has changed yet in figure skating--at least in Russia.
And so here we are, watching sport mirror big-picture politics yet again. We have Russian athletes on a massive stage trying to exhibit strength and power and yet demonstrating the rotten, rotten core of an authoritarian, aggressive state.
History doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but, as they say, it does rhyme.
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