Gangneung, South Korea, four years ago.

Alina Ilnazovna Sagitova and Yevgenia Armanovna Medvedeva are sitting in the belly of the Olympic ice rink.

One, Sagitova, Olympic champion in figure skating.

The other, Medvedeva, her training partner, silver medalist.

Sagitova was fifteen at the time, Medvedeva eighteen.

In addition to the congratulations they hear and the words they find for their freestyle performances shortly beforehand, they give a brief insight into the realities of their sports lives, into life as a figure skater in the training group of the most successful figure skating coach of the present day, Eteri Tutberidze.

She sees many younger, even better girls than her in training, says Alina Zagitova, talking about the jumps that the young girls showed.

And she thanks, like Medvedeva, "the coaches

the choreographers and the doctors”.

Medvedeva, who broke her foot before the games in the fall, speaks of "an army" that got her back on her feet.

Christopher Becker

sports editor.

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2022. Alina Zagitova and Yevgenia Medvedeva have not competed in years.

Their careers are stuck in a dead end from which they can not find a way out.

Burnt out, at least physically.

Medvedeva suffers from chronic back pain.

Sagitova is on a break from competition, which she declared two years ago.

She has long since ticked off the figure skating scene.

In Beijing she was waiting for Kamila Valeryevna Valiyeva, the next 15-year-old from Tutberidze's group.

Valiewa was already considered the best ice skater in the world when she was a junior.

She is an exception, her freestyle routine in Monday's team competition was rated twelve points higher than the performances of Sagitova and Medvedeva in Gangneung and thirty points higher than the performance of the runner-up in the team competition, Japan's Kaori Sakamoto.

She's training again

But the Russians still don't have the gold medal for winning the team competition.

And Kamila Valiyeva, the world's best figure skater, fears that she will not be admitted to the individual competition.

She is suspected of doping.

Valiyeva tested positive for the heart drug trimetazidine, which is on the doping list, on December 25 at the Russian Figure Skating Championships in Saint Petersburg.

This was confirmed by the International Testing Agency responsible for the anti-doping program at the Winter Games on Friday in Beijing.

Accordingly, Valiyeva's sample was analyzed by the anti-doping laboratory in Stockholm.

The background is the fact that the Russian anti-doping laboratory in Moscow is still not accredited.

On February 7th, the day of the team competition, the World Anti-Doping Agency WADA announced that the Swedish laboratory had communicated the result.

The Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA was informed of the positive result on February 8th, i.e. after the end of the Olympic team competition.

It is unclear why the result of the rehearsal was not announced until six weeks after the Russian championships.

The RUSADA had temporarily blocked the 15-year-old Valiewa, but lifted the block after her objection.