After IOC president Thomas Bach expressed his concern for how Kamila Valieva’s coach reacted to the Russian figure skater’s disappointing free skate, Russia responded.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov held a press conference Friday where he defended the ROC’s coaching techniques for all of its winter sports.
"Thomas Bach is a very authoritative person in the sports world. Of course we respect his opinion, but we do not necessarily agree with him," Peskov said, via Reuters’ Karolos Grohmann. "He doesn’t like the harshness of our coaches, but everybody knows that the harshness of a coach in high-level sport is key for their athletes to achieve victories. And we are seeing that the athletes are achieving victories. So let’s be proud of our winners, congratulate our medallists. Valieva was fourth but in high-level sport, the strongest wins.”
Bach’s initial comments were after he thought Valieva’s coach, Eteri Tutberidze, was too critical of Valieva immediately after her skate ended.
"I must say I was very, very disturbed yesterday when I watched the competition on TV," Bach initially said. "How high the pressure on her must have been. To see her struggling on the ice, to see her, how she tries to compose herself again, how then she tries to finish her program and you could see in every movement, in the body language, you could feel that this is immense, immense mental stress and maybe she would have preferred to just leave the ice and try to leave this story behind her."
Valieva entered her free skate leading the women’s individual competition, but she dropped to fourth after making multiple mistakes during her program.
In the end, the ROC ended up with both the gold and the silver medals in the women’s event, with Anna Shcherbakova coming in first and Alexandra Trusova coming in second. Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto received the bronze, and Valieva dropped to fourth.
