Of course COVID was going to be this bad in skating
The failure to protect Russian skaters from COVID-19 is a symptom of larger issues.
Anna Shcherbakova is Russian champion once again after winning nationals this week. One month ago, the 16-year-old withdrew from a competition with “pneumonia” —assumed to be COVID-19. At nationals she was breathing heavily, given smelling salts by her team before, and falling into her coach after skating.
“It seems to me that I will come there in any condition and will show everything I can,” she said in an interview. “I just won’t forgive myself if I don’t even try to perform, qualify, but sit at home watching everyone compete.”
Shcherbakova is a child — one who has been coached to push through pain for years—and she needed an adult to tell her no. Instead she was propped up and pushed out to center ice. And it paid off in the form of a gold medal.
At least ten other top Russian skaters have been announced to have COVID-19.
The impact of the virus on the long-term health of these young athletes is unknown and likely varied. In the short term, skaters have reported long recoveries and an inability to train as they would have before being ill. According to her partner, ice dancer Viktoria Sinitsina “suffered a severe coronavirus with partial lung damage.”
One might think that the responsibility to keep skaters safe falls to the International Skating Union, the global governing body for the sport. But they pass the buck on down to national federations, who then pass it down to clubs and coaches. Those clubs and coaches (in every country, not just Russia) have proven time and again that they prioritize winning medals over athletes’ health and safety.
With COVID-19, most national federations have taken a more careful approach than Russia’s. At competitions in the U.S., where there is also significant virus spread, audiences were banned and skaters were kept distant and masked, and the usual gatherings after competition were not held. Canada and Europe cancelled their international competitions altogether.
But the Russian federation went on with things as if there was nothing different at all about this year. There were federation-sanctioned after-parties with singing and dancing. And this attitude transferred to how athletes lived their lives outside of competition, too. Many skaters were pictured at a birthday party, and many came down with COVID afterward.
As we have seen everywhere throughout this year, public health messaging from the very top leadership must be strong and consistent. That’s why, while I’m upset at individual skaters for poor choices, furious at their coaches and seething at their federation, I’m really most angry with the ISU.
For decades, federations have demonstrated that they are in no place to look after athletes’ safety alone. This is not a new problem. I wrote last year about the need for the ISU to do something about abuse in skating. And I’m once again here writing essentially the same thing: there need to be strict, global requirements to protect athletes, and swift punishment when those requirements are not met.
The ISU should have shown leadership and cancelled this year’s Grand Prix Series. They should have developed guidances that would require countries to have low rates of transmission before holding domestic competitions. They should have educated coaches and skaters about the risks of the disease on athletes’ bodies and futures and created policy recommendations accordingly. They then should have sanctioned federations that were unable to comply (and federations should have sanctioned coaches).
Instead, they did nothing but change some of the Grand Prix assignments to keep athletes from international travel.
As a result of this gaping lack of leadership, we likely have a generation of Russian skaters who will, at best, collapse into their coaches after finishing a performance. Some may never really be able to compete again.
Cover image by Samantha Harrington with the background based on this image.
