Kamila Valieva’s Olympic dreams are hanging by a knife-edge as the bewildered teenager was pitched into a battle between the International Olympic Committee and Russia.
Valieva, just 15, was meant to be the face of these Games and was already being hailed as the greatest women’s skater of all time, guiding Russia to team gold and becoming the first woman to land a quadruple jump at the Olympics.
But as she practiced twice today at the Capitol Indoor Arena, her future was being decided in an unedifying legal wrangle that exposed the fissures and fault lines in the relationship between Russia and the IOC.
