Alexander Krushelnytsky, member of the Russian Olympic curling team in Pyeongchang, failed a doping test. Did he thereby save the reputation of curling?
Curling?
Sometimes I feel sorry for the participants in curling at the Olympic Games. If you do curling, you need to be able to take a joke. Reactions at birthday parties are always the same chuckle followed by the question: “Curling?” Even if you qualify for the Olympic Games because of your athletic achievements, you often don’t make much of an impression. “Is that really an Olympic Sport?” you get asked.
Prior to the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, curling was once again fodder for countless comedians and talk show hosts. The standard jokes about mopping as athletic achievements. Jokes about vacuuming as an Olympic sport in 2022. By now, those kinds of jokes are as original as American comedians making jokes about getting stoned in Amsterdam.
Don’t get me wrong: if I had to make a top 10 list of personal sports heroes, curling practitioners wouldn’t be on it. Not even in a top 1000, for that matter. I don’t even know if you call them “curlingers” or “curlers,” let alone know one by name. In my opinion, you do curling for the biceps or hamstrings. However, because curling teasing seems to be so popular, I try not to participate. Athletic achievements are therefore not placed in quotation marks.
Curling has been an Olympic sport for almost a hundred years with roots in the 16th century. Practitioners have had plenty of time to develop a thick skin.
Curling is bad ass
But salvation may be near! The reputation of curling as a terribly boring, not particularly intense activity with the dubious label “sport” is about to change. Alexander Krushelnytsky, member of the Russian curling team in Pyeongchang, has been officially cleared of doping charges [1]. The first test of the A-sample came back positive, and today the B-sample will be tested. You know, those vials that are inserted through hidden holes in walls in Russia.
During a routine urine check, traces of meldonium, banned in most sports since 2016, were found. “Known” thanks to the suspension of tennis star Maria Sharapova, among others. Meldonium works, among other things, by improving blood flow and thus oxygen supply. It was therefore a widely used substance among athletes from various sports branches, both before and after the ban. Sharapova said she had been using it for ten years for medical reasons and did not know that its use was banned in 2016.
It turned out that there were more athletes who apparently had medical reasons. Runners, cyclists, boxers, ice hockey players, wrestlers, to name a few. “Real athletes,” in other words.
Thanks to Alexander, we can now see curling as a real sport. If you need doping to mop like a madman, then apparently it’s really intense. A very effective way to save the reputation of curling.
Right?
Curling and doping
Unfortunately, however, the initial reactions do not indicate that the critics are now convinced. “Curling, doping, really?” So birthday parties don’t seem to immediately become more fun.
You could say that the disinterest and ignorance may be starting to waver. Perhaps people will scratch their heads when you walk past with the cheese sticks. Maybe they wonder if they made a mistake. Did they really talk to a real athlete? Should they have asked for a selfie as they probably would have if Sven Kramer was handing out cheese sticks?
I’m afraid not. Interestingly, questions about the usefulness of doping in curling also come from within the curling community itself. For example, Madeleine Dupont from the Danish team in Pyeongchang and Brent Laing from the Canadian team. Both don’t understand the added value of meldonium.
“I think most people will laugh and be like, ‘What would you possibly need doping for?’”
-Madeleine Dupont, New York Times
David Laing mentions beer and Advil as substances he is more familiar with in curling. Alexander’s wife and teammate in mixed doubles, Victoria Moiseeva, also sees no added value in doping in curling.
You need to be more accurate, not necessarily stronger. I can’t even understand what medication would be necessary and what you could use it for in curling.
So it’s not very convincing that you need performance-enhancing substances to perform in curling. Moreover, meldonium itself can’t really be seen as “cool doping” because not everyone is convinced of its effectiveness as a performance enhancer.
“Scandal”
In any other year, a doping case in curling would at most be fodder for the media to make slightly more original jokes. After all, who cares about curling?
In the current climate, it’s, to put it mildly, “unfortunate” that it’s precisely a Russian curler who fails a doping test at these Winter Games. Now we’re talking about a “scandal” in a sport that seemed too boring for scandals.
Perhaps that’s the victory.
References
nytimes.com/2018/02/19/sports/olympics/olympic-curling-doping-reaction.html
