The Kamila Valieva controversy at the Beijing Olympics came to an awful, devastating end on Thursday, with the Russian figure finishing fourth in the women’s figure skating event after a disastrous free skate.
As I wrote after the competition, the 15-year-old deserves sympathy, not scorn, given how the adults in the room — from the Court of Arbitration for Sport to the IOC to the Russian delegation — completely mishandled the fallout from the positive drug test that should have taken her out of the event.
And that’s exactly how NBC’s Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir covered Valieva. Days after summing up her short program with honest commentary, they were both sympathetic to Valieva and blamed the adults around her.
Watch below, along with some reaction from around Twitter: