Kamila Valieva saga casts shadow over curtain call for cheerless Winter Olympics

The Olympic Flame was snuffed out over Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium on Sunday night, concluding a Winter Games which will always be remembered as the one in which an ethereal figure skater fell to earth.

Fifteen-year-old Kamila Valieva is already back in Russia, having arrived initially to light up the Chinese capital with an otherworldly short program, before her tragic and almost incomprehensible truth emerged.

The treatment of Valieva – not just by her closest coaches who were so rightly and memorably excoriated by International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach, but by all those complicit in the ongoing Russian doping saga including, ultimately, Bach himself – left another indelible stain on a Games that were never exactly destined to be whiter-than-white.

Soiled by allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, bludgeoned into a collective state of dread and nervousness by gruellingly strict Covid protocols, locked down beneath half-empty grandstands with ‘No Cheering’ signs, Beijing was the Winter Olympics that fun forgot.

Sure, as always, there were inspiring moments that will live long in the memory, not least amid the unrelenting drama of the figure skating rink, on which Nathan Chen reached for the stars to the strains of ‘Rocket Man’, and Alexandra Trusova nailed five quad jumps and stormed off stage-left.

There was glorious and overdue redemption for Lindsey Jacobellis, who won two gold medals aged 36, 16 years after missing her opportunity when she crashed in the snowboard-cross with the finish line at her mercy.

And there was, of course, the thrilling final Sunday on which Eve Muirhead, having overcome setbacks and staged so many great escapes, rallied her Great Britain curling team to seal gold 20