Thin ice

That's why they play the games, or skate the skates, as it were. We never know how things are going to turn out, no matter what all the indications are.

It's certain that none of us has the slightest sure knowledge of what goes on with Kamila Valieva, the great young Russian figure skater.

She was in first place, chasing the gold in the Olympics, and the the other night she had a disastrous turn on the ice, falling repeatedly and dropping out of medal contention with a fourth-place finish.

In the space of a week, she was the face of a doping scandal as worldwide outcries cried out to do something about the rules. She tested positive for a heart medication on Christmas Day, and it was blamed on a mixup with her grandfather's medications.

I will add that the only medication my grandfather ever shared with me was Crystal Hot Sauce. He always kept his in the refrigerator, because of the prevailing wisdom of the day, which said, right on the label, "To keep it hot, keep it cold," a paradox that amused me then and now.

But that was just me and my grandpa. Our interaction did not have the attention of the entire world, and that is why it was tough to see what happened to Ms Valieva the other night, not that I was watching. 

To get an idea of how silly I think it is to have a "sport" where the outcome hinges on the opinions of onlookers, imagine if, after 60 minutes of football or nine innings of baseball, a panel of observers held up cards to indicate who they think the winner is.

And think of yourself at age 15. I was a hot-sauce eating, lawn-mowing, Weejun-wearing, Max Shulman-reading mess, good at English and history, horrible at Math and Science (still am) and no part of that should have been on a worldwide stage. I was fortunate enough to be allowed to grow up out of the spotlight. 

2014 Olympian Ashley Wagner said this on Twitter: "This is a moment where you genuinely have to say – that poor kid. She should not have ever been put in this position."

Possibly because she was unnerved by all the publicity of the week, or possibility because she is still young, or possibly because, no matter her age, she is still just a human and all of us have bad days,  Valieva made mistakes on her first four jumps and then hit the ice as she attempted a quad toe loop.

I have performed many quad toe leaps in my sloping driveway, just going out to get the newspaper on an icy morning. But again, no one but maybe an amused neighbor or two saw me.  Valieva finished fifth in the long program, as two of her teammates and training partners, Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova, won the gold and the silver, respectively.

Valieva was seen crying as her dance music, "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel, stopped playing. 

That song was used with much happier results in the movie "10", starring Bo Derek and Dudley Moore. 

As sad as it was to see Valieva in tears, the part that angered many was seeing her  coach, Eteri Tutberidze, pouncing on her as camera caught the whole horrible one-sided conversation.

 "Why did you let it go?" Tutberidze said, according to Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda. "Why did you stop fighting? Explain it to me, why? You let it go after that axel. Why?"

What was worse, I ask: coming face to face with her own shortcomings, or coming literally face to face with this awful man screeching at her like that?

Valieva was considered the world's best figure skater even before her remarkable performance a week ago that gave the Russians a gold medal in the team competition. And the very next day, she learned that she had tested positive for  trimetazidine, a heart medication that is banned because it can improve endurance and blood flow.

And the supervisors and the coaches and, you may be sure, the lawyers got into it and who knows how it will all play out. Of course we will never know if she intentionally took the drug, or if someone intentionally slipped it to her to enhance her performance, or if the whole thing was a merry mixup.

But we do know that she is 15, and maybe it would be best for the Olympics to set an age limit above that and allow tweens to stay home and do what 15-year-olds do so well, which is being 15.