Kamila Valiyeva covered her eyes with her red gloves.

The 15-year-old European figure skating champion from Russia fought back tears after her botched freestyle.

When the prodigy slipped off the ice on Thursday, it was clear that the hoped-for and longed-for Olympic victory had come to nothing.

Valiyeva's performance lacked magic after all the turmoil of the past few days.

She blundered in her jumps and showed nerves.

Her trainer Eteri Tutberidze received her rather coldly and did not hug her.

Valiewa was unable to defend her lead from the short program after days of fuss about her doping offense.

She slipped down to fourth place in the women's singles and thus remained without a medal.

Gold went to the Russian world champion Anna Schcherbakova with 255.95 points.

Silver went to her teammate Alexandra Trusowa, bronze went to the Japanese Kaori Sakamoto.

Valiyeva, on the other hand, fell to the sound of Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" while doing the quadruple salchow and the quadruple toe loop didn't quite work either.

"She was a shadow of herself when she walked out here.

She couldn't win this whole game.

What happened now is the worst, she broke it," said the former figure skater and today's ARD expert Katarina Witt and had to wipe tears from her eyes.

“They really have been thrown to the world to eat now.

Someone responsible should have taken her out before this tsunami even started," said Witt, expressing the hope that she would "survive it and that she will come back".

Medals will be awarded

While Valiyeva first disappeared into the catacombs of the Capital Indoor Stadium, there was a small ceremony on the ice for the medal winners.

Shcherbakova proudly posed with a mascot and was photographed with the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee slung over her shoulders.

With this result it is also clear that there will also be an official medal ceremony for the top three.

The IOC had decided that if Valiyeva won another medal in Beijing, there would be no award ceremony for the time being.

The International Olympic Committee had announced that the result would be considered provisional and given an asterisk.

The background is the positive doping test Valiyewas, who had previously led the Russian team to gold in Beijing.

The doping offense from December only became known after the team final.

The medal presentation for the teams was therefore cancelled.

The International Court of Arbitration for Sports Cas had allowed the European champion in an urgent procedure to also take part in the women's singles.

In the main, the case has not yet been decided.

Nicole Schott runs in 18th place

Shcherbakova showed a fabulous freestyle in which the balance of technique and artistic design became a wonderful whole.

Although she only showed two quadruples, she earned gold.

Jumping wonder Trusowa showed the most difficult technical program for women at the Olympic Games with five quadruple jumps - but all this at the expense of ice art and expressiveness.

Things did not go well for German champion Nicole Schott.

The 25-year-old from Essen dropped from 14th place to 17th after the short program.

In 2018 in Pyeongchang she was 18. After Schott had put the combination of the triple flip and toe loop perfectly on the ice, she fell on the second triple flip.

In addition, she had to support herself with the triple Salchow with her hand.

"It could have gone better, but nobody cares if you finish fourteenth or eighteenth," she said.

In the Valiyeva case, there is now a lot to be clarified, even without an Olympic medal: starting with the long delay in transmitting the positive test for the heart drug trimetazidine to Rusada in December 2021, to the lifting of the provisional suspension, to the question: why did the young Top athlete taken or got the banned substance?

What about the explanation that the trimetazidine could have unwittingly entered her system by drinking from a glass of the heart-sick grandfather?

Mario Thevis, head of the renowned Cologne doping control laboratory, spoke out in favor of taking a hair sample.

"With the analysis, one can possibly distinguish very well whether it was a matter of repeated intake of trimetazidine in larger quantities or an accidental, single dose," he told ARD.

It is unlikely that the case will be completed by the time of the World Championships from March 21 to 27 in Montpellier.