In the 30-plus years I’ve covered Olympic figure skating, I thought I had seen and heard it all, from Tonya-Nancy to the French judge, from Russian cheating to, well, Russian cheating, most recently the Kamila Valieva scandal at the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games.
But then this week the internet produced an unprecedented surprise: Valieva’s new long program for the 2022-23 season, which included me.
My voice, actually: a soundbite from a CNN interview a few hours after Valieva’s shocking meltdown in the women’s long program in February in Beijing.
At a recent Russian preview event for the upcoming skating season, Valieva, dressed somberly in black, stands still on the ice as a mix of foreboding music and a few words in Russian play throughout the arena, followed by these words in English, “It was unexpected, it was shocking…,” which were mine.