Thomas Bach hits out at ‘chilling’ attitude of Kamila Valieva’s coaches

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has launched a scathing attack on the team behind Kamila Valieva, the 15-year-old figure skater at the centre of a drugs probe who wilted under the global glare of the Winter Olympics in Beijing on Thursday night.

Bach said he was “disturbed” by the “chilling” attitude of Valieva’s coaches as she left the ice in tears after falling twice in an error-strewn performance that resulted in her slumping from first place after Tuesday’s women’s short program to fourth and out of the medals.

Valieva appeared to be confronted by her controversial coach Eteri Tutberidze, who, according to Russian media reports, immediately questioned why the teenager “stopped fighting” after making an initial mistake on her opening triple axel, and did not offer a customary embrace.

Bach said: “I was very disturbed when I watched the competition on TV – when I afterwards saw how she was received by her closest entourage with what appeared to be tremendous coolness – it was chilling to see this.

“Rather than giving her comfort, rather than trying to help her. You could feel this chilling atmosphere, this distance. If you were interpreting the body language, it got even worse. It was even dismissive.”

The controversy continued as Valieva’s 17-year-old Moscow club-mate Alexandra Trusova raged into a Russian TV microphone about the apparent injustice of landing five completed quad jumps and only earning silver, insisting: “I will never go out on the ice again.”

Meanwhile gold medallist Anna Shcherbakova, also 17 and the third member of Tutberidze’s Sambo-70 club, which has been criticised for its tough training regimes that have yielded a number of premature retirements, was left alone in the