Feb 1 (Reuters) – Kamila Valieva’s comeback bought off to an inauspicious begin, as the previous Olympic prodigy completed sixth within the semi-finals of the Russian Leaping Championships on Sunday in her first competitors since serving a four-year doping ban.
The 19-year-old had a bobble on the touchdown of her opening quadruple toe loop, fell on her second after which completed with a messy double flip, triple Salchow mixture.
Not like conventional skating occasions, skaters had 90 seconds every to finish a collection of jumps solely with generic background music enjoying. The highest three superior to the ultimate.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV by way of Getty Photographs
Practically 4 years after her involvement in a doping scandal that marred the 2022 Olympics, Valieva re-entered the highlight on Saturday within the quarter-finals that featured a clear quad toe loop, a bounce that solely a small variety of feminine skaters have landed.
Regardless of her error-filled skate on Sunday, followers waved banners together with her identify and hurled dozens of plush toys on the ice afterwards.
Valieva stays ineligible for the Milano Cortina Olympics, which start on Friday. Three-time Russian nationwide champion Adeliia Petrosian will compete as an Particular person Impartial Athlete, and is taken into account among the many contenders for the ladies’s title.
Valieva was 15 when she grew to become the centre of a world controversy on the 2022 Olympics, after a pattern taken two months earlier examined constructive for the banned substance trimetazidine.
The failed take a look at emerged after she helped Russia win workforce gold, a outcome from which she was later disqualified, elevating the USA to the highest of the rostrum.
Underneath intense scrutiny, she completed fourth within the girls’s occasion, receiving harsh criticism from her coach Eteri Tutberidze.
The minimal age for skaters on the Olympics has since been raised to 17.
