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American Olympic bronze medalist Adam Rippon blasted the Russian Olympic Committee on Monday over its recent doping scandal at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics involving 15-year-old figure skater Kamila Valieva, calling them "dirty cheaters."
Rippon, who helped Team USA take home the bronze medal in the figure skating team event at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, told Time magazine in an article published Monday that Valieva’s positive test for a banned drug will leave a dark mark on the Olympics for years to come.
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"Dirty cheaters, and we are accommodating them," Rippon said. "I don’t know how the Olympics recovers from this."
The Russian Olympic Committee's Kamila Valieva during the Women Single Skating - Free Skating on day 11 of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games at the Capital Indoor Stadium, Beijing. (Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
"They shouldn’t be here at the Olympic Games," he continued. "They’re clowns."
The 15-year-old sensation tested positive for trimetazidine at the 2022 Russian Figure Skating Championships in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Dec. 25. Her sample came back positive last week after the Russian Olympic Committee took home the gold in the team event, prompting her initial ban.
The Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) lifted her ban in a hearing over the weekend, which allowed her to compete in the women's short program on Tuesday amid fierce backlash from the Olympic community.
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Valieva finished first in the qualifying round with a score of 82.16. The top 25 skaters advanced to the women’s free skating medal event on Thursday. An additional skater qualified as a result of Valieva’s qualification.
Kamila Valieva of Team ROC reacts after skating during the Women Single Skating Short Program on day eleven of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games at Capital Indoor Stadium on Feb. 15, 2022, in Beijing, China. (Harry How/Getty Images)
As a minor, Valieva’s age has put much of the blame on her coaches and trainers.
"What this says is that the team around her are child abusers," Rippon said. "The only thing they care about is performance, and not the health and well-being of their athletes. They are a factory that pumps out children who can compete, up to a certain point. It doesn’t feel like the coaches involved in the ladies’ program are coaches at all, but dog trainers; they’re running a circus."
Rippon took to Twitter to elaborate, pointing out the difficulties of the situation for all those involved.
Mariah Bell of Team United States talks with coach and former Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon during a practice session ahead of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games at Capital Indoor Stadium on Feb. 1, 2022, in Beijing, China. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
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"None of this is fair. You can be heartbroken for this 15 year old girl and at the same time be heartbroken that every other skater in this event will have to compete knowing that the competition is not clean," he wrote.
"I am so angry. The ladies event tomorrow is a complete joke. It’s not a real competition and it most likely won’t even have a medal ceremony. So many Olympic experiences stolen from clean athletes who got here without the help of performance enhancing drugs. What a shame."
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