{"id":611115,"date":"2022-04-18T18:25:21","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T18:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=128912"},"modified":"2022-04-18T18:25:21","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T18:25:21","slug":"kamila-valieva-and-eileen-gu-young-women-athletes-as-enemies-of-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/04\/18\/kamila-valieva-and-eileen-gu-young-women-athletes-as-enemies-of-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Kamila Valieva and Eileen Gu:\u00a0 Young Women Athletes as Enemies of Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kamila Valieva<\/p>\n

As one who has followed Olympic women\u2019s figure skating, especially since Michelle Kwan (ironically a Chinese-American), I was\u2014as an egalitarian feminist when it comes to sports\u2014excited to learn that there was a 15-year-old Russian woman skater, Kamila Valieva, who could do effortless quad jumps.\u00a0 Waiting in anticipation of her first Olympic performance, I listened to commentators<\/a> and former US skaters Tara Lipinsky and Johnny Weir rave about her spectacular talent.\u00a0 They told the audience that we were about to see \u201cthe best skating in the world\u201d\u2026that \u201ca talent like this comes around once in a lifetime.\u201d\u00a0 They found her first performance in the short skate \u201cincredible\u2026 flawless\u2026 perfect in every way.\u201d\u00a0 It was, they said, a rare privilege to watch her perform:\u00a0 \u201cshe will have an amazing legacy.\u201d\u00a0 Days later they would say nothing watching her perform.<\/p>\n

Weir and Lipinski were disgusted<\/a>.\u00a0 They said she should not be there.\u00a0 It was so unfair to the other skaters.\u00a0 They were too sickened to even watch her.\u00a0 What happened?\u00a0 The Empire and its allies, based on a highly questionable positive drug test, declared her a \u201cdoper.\u201d\u00a0 She was booed, harassed.\u00a0 And she finally (literally) fell.\u00a0 The Russians should obviously not have the first female Olympic quad jumper.\u00a0 The Russians were taking far too many gold medals.\u00a0 This whole spectacle was an intersection of hegemonic American world politics and ruthless patriarchy.\u00a0 Women athletes had become enemies, and thus victims, of Empire. USA!\u00a0 USA!<\/p>\n

The US has always had a need to be first\u2014to put it mildly.\u00a0 Any coverage of Olympic or international games I\u2019ve ever watched features US athletes and almost never anyone else.\u00a0 President Jimmy Carter got the ball rolling with his 1980 boycott of the Olympics in the Soviet Union.\u00a0 Under Carter the Cold War had worsened because of factors like American criticism of Soviet alleged abuses of human rights and the Afghan crisis\u2014therefore the controversial move to ignore the Olympics\u2019 so-called non-political philosophy.\u00a0 American views of Russian athletics did not improve:\u00a0 the alleged Russian Doping Scandals<\/a> began around 2008 and are still going. In 2008, Russian track and field athletes were suspended from competition because of supposed doping, cheating, cover-ups, even \u201cstate-sponsored\u201d doping.<\/p>\n

A 2015 New York Times<\/em> article cited an ex-chief of a so-called Russian anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, who claimed that samples were doctored so that several Russian gold medal winners in the 2014 winter games in Sochi could be victors.\u00a0 Members of the Russian Sports Ministry thought it an April Fools\u2019 joke<\/a>, done for \u201cpurely political reasons\u201d and threatened to sue the Times. <\/em>The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had asked the accuser, Mr. Rodchenkov, to resign years before, for taking bribes, and since 2012 he had lived in L A.\u00a0 Because of such allegations, the World Athletics Federation suspended the Russian Athletic Federation in 2015, but let \u201cclean athletes\u201d participate under \u201cneutral status\u201d:\u00a0 no Russian flags or anthems.\u00a0 In 2019, 2020 and 2021, more accusations were brought against various Russian sports officials for \u201cfalsifying documents\u201d and etc., and thus the suspensions continued.<\/p>\n

President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government have strongly denied the allegations<\/a>, calling them a political weapon of the West.\u00a0 Any appeals from Russian athletes have been denied.\u00a0 Some argued all countries cheated, why single out Russia?\u00a0 Others thought the Russians were being framed to keep their very strong athletes from competitions.\u00a0 It does seem odd that once your athletes were so scrutinized you would be careful to stop \u201cdoping.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, the stated goal of the Russian Sports Ministry at the end of 2021 was \u2013once again\u2014to have the Russian Athletic Federation and Anti-Doping Agency reinstated.\u00a0 The \u201cWest\u201d has remained hostile toward Russian athletics.\u00a0 And this most certainly included Russian ice skaters:\u00a0 a sport where Russia has been at the very top for years.<\/p>\n

Kamila Valieva had to skate under the same restraints that all Russian athletes face.\u00a0 But because she was so incredibly good, the skating world simply had to acknowledge her.\u00a0 In looking at her biographical data<\/a>\u2014there\u2019s not much!\u00a0 She\u2019s only 15; born in April of 2006 in Kazan, Russia.\u00a0 And she has a Pomeranian named Lena, a gift from a fan.\u00a0 Before she was five years old, her mother had her in gymnastics, ballet and skating, but after age five, it was only skating.\u00a0\u00a0 In her first season out of junior ranking she had risen far above her opposition.\u00a0 She is the fourth woman to land a quadruple jump in competition and the first to do it in Olympic competition.\u00a0 Valieva set world records on her path to Grand Prix titles in Vancouver and Sochi, and the European Championships in Tallinn in January of this year.\u00a0 In Beijing the expectations for Kamila Valieva were very high.\u00a0 As one Russian journalist<\/a> put it, she was so good in her short skate routine in Beijing that \u201ceven some western media outlets often so begrudging with their praise of Russian athletes were forced\u2014perhaps through gritted teeth\u2014to lavish praise on Valieva.\u201d And when she competed next, for the Russian team, she did become the first woman to land a quad in Olympic history. But very soon after that, it was rumored there were \u201cdoping allegations\u201d against Kamila Valieva.\u00a0 A test taken in December was only revealed just then\u2014in the midst of the March Olympics.\u00a0 It seemed the Russians may not fare so well after all.<\/p>\n

Of course, the US also insisted on besting the Chinese athletes in Beijing, but added a nasty political narrative about their host.\u00a0 Sports analysts like Mike Tirico were pressed into service as experts on alleged Chinese abuses vs. Uyghurs (abuses debunked by reporters like Max Blumenthal<\/a>), their \u201cauthoritarian\u201d government, misguided Covid protocols, etc.\u00a0 American politicians and media had already prepped the US audience to be anti-Asian generally, by these supposed abuses and the potential of China becoming an even greater economic power\u2014and unapologetically socialist as well.\u00a0 The COVID pandemic was their fault too; President Trump calling it \u201cKung Flu\u201d or the \u201cChinese virus.\u201d\u00a0 It was embarrassing to listen to the vitriolic commentary by US \u201canalysts\u201d with their long recanting of Chinese faults and crimes.\u00a0 Our ugly history with China started with the US involvement in the Opium War through the dangerous gradual encirclement of present-day China with US warships and bases placed on numerous unwilling Pacific islands, as John Pilger\u2019s brilliant film The Coming War on China<\/em><\/a> illustrates. \u00a0\u00a0And the US had tried to help their bad faith anti-China Olympic campaign with a \u201cdiplomatic boycott\u201d (which didn\u2019t really catch on).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Eileen Gu<\/p>\n

Another young woman athlete, Chinese-American Eileen Gu, also became a victim of the Empire\u2019s anger.\u00a0 Gu is 18; she has a Chinese mother and was raised in San Francisco.\u00a0 A brilliant world class freestyle skier, she has medalled in X Games, the World Championship and the Youth Olympics.\u00a0 Gu announced<\/a> in 2019 that she would represent China in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.\u00a0 But she wasn\u2019t called a traitor until the Olympics drew near.<\/p>\n

Gu has said that she welcomes the opportunity to draw people to winter sports.\u00a0 The Chinese cheered her<\/a> everywhere, but Americans not so much.\u00a0 She was derided for taking advantage of \u201cpremier training\u201d in the US and then abandoning the US for China.\u00a0 Tucker Carlson said she had betrayed her country and \u201crenounced\u201d her citizenship.\u00a0 The New York Times <\/em>portrayed Gu<\/a> as an \u201canti-hero of the feminist ideal\u201d since she chose China which supposedly oppresses women.\u00a0 At the other end of the political spectrum, right-wing social media echoed Carlson\u2019s sentiments in calling for Gu to leave the country for her betrayal.\u00a0 Gu won three Olympic medals in freestyle skiing, two gold and a silver.\u00a0 Unfortunately for USA her three medals added to China\u2019s total of 15 (with nine gold), best ever for China in a winter Olympics.<\/p>\n

Eileen Gu also faces anti-female prejudice<\/a> since extreme sports has always been male-dominated, although women do compete alongside the men.\u00a0 Gu thinks \u201cas a young biracial woman, it is super important to be able to push boundaries. . . those of the sport and those of the record books because that\u2019s what paves the paths for the next generation of girls.\u201d\u00a0 So why does the country where she lives give her an incredibly hard time?\u00a0 As professor of sport Simon Chadwick said, \u201cHer success is being weaponized and used for geopolitical purposes.\u00a0 This is incredibly unfair because she\u2019s an 18-year-old athlete with a dual heritage family who just wants to try her best and make her parents proud, and yet she\u2019s being turned into a geopolitical weapon.\u201d\u00a0 Journalist Danny Haiphong has argued<\/a> that Eileen Gu has chosen the \u201cwrong\u201d side by choosing to compete for a non-white, communist country.\u00a0 She is assaulting \u201cAmerican exceptionalism\u201d \u2013being a traitor to the \u201cempire\u2019s civilizing mission.\u201d\u00a0 She should not be skiing for the \u201cChinese devils.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 But Gu insists (on her Instagram) she hopes \u201cto unite people, promote common understanding, create communication, and forge friendship.\u201d\u00a0 And she has said:\u00a0 \u201cI am also a teenage girl.\u00a0 I do my best to make the world a better place, and I\u2019m having fun while doing it.\u201d\u00a0 Not what the Empire is about.<\/p>\n

Vietnamese-American Haiphong also has pointed out<\/a> that some American athletes were not going for the Empire\u2019s narrative that the Chinese were being bad hosts\u2014inferior food, lodging, unreasonable COVID protocols, and so on. \u00a0Snowboarder Tessa Maud refuted American media\u2019s narrative and talked of the warm welcome she\u2019d received by Chinese volunteers and how she loved the local cuisine. \u00a0\u00a0Skier Aaron Blunk went so far as to criticize American media coverage of the games on Twitter as often \u201ccompletely false.\u201d\u00a0 He called Beijing one of the better Olympics he\u2019s been in, including the COVID protocols, the hosting:\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s been phenomenal.\u201d\u00a0 So Twitter suspended his account.\u00a0 As Haiphong put it:\u00a0 \u201cHumanizing China represents a direct threat to the new Cold War Agenda.\u201d\u00a0 The US must control the narrative, and that included not allowing China, or Russia, to shine.<\/p>\n

The Empire certainly succeeded in taking the shine from the great Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva.\u00a0 Commentators Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, who had just called Valieva the \u201cbest skater in the world\u201d with a \u201ctalent that comes once in a lifetime,\u201d were about to change their minds.\u00a0 At Beijing, Valieva\u2019s performance in the short skate was \u201ca thing of great beauty.\u201d\u00a0 Weir and Lipinski thought it \u201cincredible.\u201d\u00a0 Weir gushed<\/a> about the interview he had been granted by the young Valieva.\u00a0 Her second performance was a free skate for the Russian team.\u00a0 She fell once but the skate was historic because as noted, she became the first woman in history to land a quad at the Olympics.\u00a0 She finished 30 points ahead of second place Kaori Sakamoto.\u00a0 Weir and Lipinski could not find enough superlatives.<\/p>\n

All awaited what would no doubt be another historic performance by Valieva in the ladies singles event.\u00a0 But then rumors began<\/a> that the medal ceremony, with Russia winning gold and the US silver\u2014would be delayed.\u00a0 And then that \u201ca Russian skater\u201d had a positive doping test.\u00a0 Then it leaked it was Kamila Valieva, in spite of IOC rules that any accusation against a \u201cminor\u201d must remain secret.\u00a0 A test taken on December 25, sent to a Swedish lab, showed minute traces of trimetazidine, an \u201cillegal\u201d heart drug which may have some positive effect on athletic performance, although many argue it would not help skaters.\u00a0 Valieva\u2019s family and coaching team believed she may have been exposed to it through her grandfather, who took the drug.\u00a0 The Russian team also said she had repeatedly tested negative before and after the positive sample.\u00a0 They said she was innocent.\u00a0 The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) panel ruled she would not be suspended from the competition.\u00a0 A further investigation would happen later, now scheduled to conclude by mid-August.<\/p>\n

Kamila Valieva rallied to lead the field in the ladies short program.\u00a0 This was when stalwart patriots Lipinski and Weir were too disgusted to watch.\u00a0 I remember these stalwarts as being very nasty in speaking of the Russian skaters both during the Sochi (Russia) Olympics in 2014, and the 2018 PyeongChang\u00a0 (South Korea) \u00a0games (where \u201ccleared\u201d Russians could skate).\u00a0\u00a0 Some observers found<\/a> them \u201ca breath of fresh air,\u201d but others as \u201cmean, obnoxious, distracting.\u201d\u00a0 At any rate, they were outraged Valieva was allowed to perform.\u00a0 She was \u201cruining everything.\u201d\u00a0 Their only comment after her performance was \u201cshe skated.\u201d\u00a0 Getting their wish for her downfall, the scandal finally impacted her free skate and she finished fourth after stumbles and falls.\u00a0 Unfortunately for USA! Russian Alexandra Trusova won silver.\u00a0 Former Russian ice dancer champion Alexander Zhulin has said that international sports authorities will have to live with \u201cruining\u201d Kamila Valieva\u2019s Olympic dreams.\u00a0 He had never \u201cseen Kamila so lost.\u201d\u00a0 The IOC and WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) \u201cdestroyed and removed<\/a> the biggest star of figure skating.\u201d\u00a0 The December 25 test was revealed after team Russia\u2019s brilliant performance, capped by Valieva\u2019s skate, won gold.\u00a0 It does seem like an American Empire kind of move.<\/p>\n

Valieva\u2019s coact Eteri Tutberidze, who, along with Kamila\u2019s team, was (incredibly) criticized by the IOC\u2019s<\/a> Thomas Bach, for being \u201ctoo cold.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Tutberidze said Kamila was \u201cour star.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cThose who smiled yesterday\u2014today left the stands demonstrably ignoring and pouncing like jackals.\u201d\u00a0 There were reporters, especially the British, who followed her around at practice, yelling \u201cAre you a doper?\u201d\u00a0 Valieva addressed her Beijing experience in two \u201cemotional instagrams\u201d in late February.\u00a0 She thanked her coaches for \u201chelping me to be strong.\u201d\u00a0 And she thanked all who \u201cwere with me during this tough period . . who did not let me lose heart. . and who believed in me.\u201d\u00a0 A few weeks later she was on the ice again.<\/p>\n

Kamila participated in the \u201cChannel One Cup\u201d<\/a> \u00a0Russian skating (competitive) exhibition, since Russian skaters were banned from the Worlds.\u00a0 Valieva skated a \u201csimplified\u201d program, but said the experience of being out on the ice was \u201cexhilarating.\u201d\u00a0 Anna Shcherbakova won the women\u2019s event.\u00a0 Valieva has said that the Olympics should not be \u201cidealized\u201d and her \u201cjourney is just beginning.\u201d In a recent interview with \u201cPeople Talk\u201d she said she can be \u201ccocky, obnoxious, stubborn, insecure.\u201d\u00a0 But also \u201csociable, cheerful, active, and of course, romantic\u2026\u201d\u00a0 In skating programs, her coaches see her in \u201clyrical images,\u201d but she wants to be \u201cdifferent in programs:\u00a0 a hooligan, daring, bold.\u201d\u00a0 She is a typical teenager, but also very intelligent, a brilliant athlete and a targeted enemy of Empire.<\/p>\n

Sportswriters can be very effective operatives for Empire.\u00a0 My favorite is probably Christine Brennan.\u00a0 I had admired Brennan as one of the team of reporters on HBO\u2019s \u201cReal Sports,\u201d although unfortunately now they seem more apt to take a corporate line than do the critical reporting they used to do.\u00a0 Brennan accused Valieva<\/a>, and Russia, of turning the Winter Games \u201cinto a bizarre and troubling fiasco\u201d because of their \u201cstate-sponsored doping.\u201d\u00a0 She said Valieva \u201cwould have been favored to win\u201d the Worlds in Montpelier, but she \u201ccrumbled under the scrutiny of her positive drug test.\u201d\u00a0 When Americans won the pairs skating title at Worlds, their first since 1979, Brennan wrote:\u00a0 \u201cNo Russia?\u00a0 No China?\u00a0 No problem.\u201d\u00a0 And \u201cfew will miss them.\u201d\u00a0 The Beijing medal count had USA with 25 medals, behind Norway, Russia, Germany and Canada, much like their finish at PyeongChang.\u00a0 The Russians had 32 medals, with six gold; the Chinese had 15, with nine gold; USA! had a paltry 25, with eight gold, well behind Russia.\u00a0 Totally unacceptable.<\/p>\n

Of course, by the World Championships, more than Valieva and her fellow skaters were ousted from competition.\u00a0 It was all Russia, all the time\u2014everyone Russian was out because the World Federations of all the sports, influenced and\/or bludgeoned into it, had banned them all because of the Russian military action in Ukraine.\u00a0 This was the Russian response to being encircled with troops and NATO forces, and a Nazi-led government provided by the US in Ukraine in 2014, which had been attacking the Russian-language population of eastern Ukraine since that 2014 coup.\u00a0 An unprecedented campaign of Western propaganda and lies is in full swing, definitely McCarthyite in its depth and with parallel lasting and dangerous results to come.\u00a0 In the 1950s Ethel Rosenberg was executed for being a communist wife\u2014a wife who either evilly influenced her husband Julius to reveal atomic secrets to the Russians or did not, as was her duty, stop him from doing so.\u00a0 Julius Rosenberg, executed with his wife, was reputedly worried that if the US gained too much power without a balance from the Soviets, it would lead to a dangerous situation.\u00a0 And he was right.\u00a0 The US government has become an Empire that will tolerate no state competitor, nor even states who will not line up and stay with the American Empire\u2019s plans.\u00a0 This is very clear in the world of sport\u2014certainly in the supposedly apolitical Olympic world.<\/p>\n

To punish Russia, the US\/Europe have gone totally insane with their bans and sanctions.\u00a0 Many sanctions such as Russian energy, will only punish Europe; others involve outright piracy as in US allies helping themselves to Russian yachts.\u00a0 The list goes on, but in the world of sport\u2014athletes from Russia and its close ally Belarus are banned \u201cuntil further notice\u201d from international skiing, track and field events, tennis, basketball, aquatic sports, volleyball, curling, hockey, rugby, football (soccer), and of course, skating.\u00a0 Many of these sports have Russian champions, and they, as Christine Brennan put it, \u201cwill not be missed.\u201d\u00a0 A few officials have objected<\/a>, and paid for it.\u00a0 Russian sports officials say<\/a> they will \u201ctemporarily\u201d develop their own competitions, with foreign athletes.\u00a0 They say the western world is committing \u201csporting genocide\u201d against its athletes.<\/p>\n

So Kamila Valieva and company will skate at home, and Eileen Gu will still be considered a traitor by many Americans.\u00a0 The hate expressed by Tara Lipinski and Christine Brennan is too easily tapped by the American sports world.\u00a0 Here is hegemonic politics, and ruthless patriarchy and racism, coming together.\u00a0 And here are two remarkably strong and level-headed young women athletes who are braving the results of being who they are.\u00a0 In its overwhelming power, the US Empire has made evil all things Chinese and Russian, and women athletes have not been spared the weaponizing of that hate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Kamila Valieva and Eileen Gu:\u00a0 Young Women Athletes as Enemies of Empire<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kamila Valieva As one who has followed Olympic women\u2019s figure skating, especially since Michelle Kwan (ironically a Chinese-American), I was\u2014as an egalitarian feminist when it comes to sports\u2014excited to learn that there was a 15-year-old Russian woman skater, Kamila Valieva, who could do effortless quad jumps.\u00a0 Waiting in anticipation of her first Olympic performance, I [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Kamila Valieva and Eileen Gu:\u00a0 Young Women Athletes as Enemies of Empire<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8886,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1235,47701,5040,414,11518,24,16,124,376,1,58,1233,8724],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8886"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611115"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611278,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611115\/revisions\/611278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}