We want to give a new, young generation of clean Russian athletes the opportunity to be at the Olympics and be ambassadors of a new, clean Russian sport.”
That's what Thomas Bach said before the 2018 Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, the first Winter Games after the Russian cheating games in Sochi.
Four years later, the most prominent member of the young generation has a huge problem.
The attribute clean must be deleted from Kamila Valiewa.
Positive for trimetazidine, a heart drug taken for angina pectoris.
It is also said to improve blood flow.
Kamila Valiyeva is 15 years old, a "protected person" under the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
It will be at the discretion of the International Court of Arbitration for Sport whether the world's best figure skater will be allowed to compete in Tuesday's women's competition.
The lawyers will have to answer questions about how the drug got into Valiyeva's body and how much she is to blame.
The WADA Code is designed to hit backers and protect children.
Anyone who administered the substance to Valiyeva faces a four-year ban.
Can someone take a penalty while Valiyeva runs to gold?
Is there another favorable explanation?
The safeguard clause for children and people who lack intellectual insight into what they are doing has a good purpose.
And in figure skating meets a reality in which 15-year-olds have been doing competitive sports for almost ten years.
The best, like Valiyeva, are trained in Russia by Eteri Tutberidze, a medal maker who boasts of her “pity-free” training.
Unfortunately, we in Germany know all too well that coaches and officials can be willing to risk the health of minors for medals.
We do not know what circumstances led to the Valiyeva case.
But the indications give reason to fear the worst: there is the Russian tradition of doping, the will to use every loophole, which is not only cultivated in Russia;
and there is this "culture" in figure skating of using children's bodies, making them interchangeable.
It is possible that a teenager who was doped in December could compete again on Tuesday.
It wouldn't just be a scandal.
It would be a crime.