Notorious and ruthless: Meet the 'Cruella de Vil' coach in spotlight over Kamila Valieva failed drugs test
With her designer jackets, inscrutable expressions and shock of dyed blonde hair, Eteri Tutberidze explicitly styles herself as Russian figure skating’s answer to Cruella de Vil. This 47-year-old former ice dancer, now facing urgent questions around her protege Kamila Valieva’s descent at these Winter Olympics from teenage stardom to doping scandal, appears almost to revel in her reputation for hauteur. That much was evident from a practice session by Alexandra Trusova, Valieva’s team-mate, which, under the coach’s icy gaze, was choreographed to Florence and the Machine’s “Call Me Cruella”.
“Clean and innocent”: this is how Tutberidze depicts her wunderkind, despite confirmation that Valieva tested positive on Christmas Day for trimetazidine, a banned heart medication known to improve endurance. And yet the coach’s own career is anything but a canvas of flawless purity. While there is no confirmation that she has given performance-enhancing drugs to her athletes, there is abundant testimony to her harsh training methods, which now inform the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision on whether Valieva can continue competing in Beijing.
Tutberidze’s own ambitions of global skating glory were sabotaged in her youth, with a combination of a growth spurt and spinal fracture rendering any Olympic hopes remote. Her subsequent explorations of the international ice dance circuit were nothing if not traumatic. When she visited Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 with the Russian Ice Ballet, Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building directly opposite her hostel, killing 168 people, in what remains the most deadly act of domestic terrorism committed on American soil. The name of Tutberidze is still inscribed on the “Survivor Wall”, created in honour of the 600 who survived the attack, many with serious injuries.
This life-changing experience did not dissuade her from trying to build a life in the US, where she and her husband began coaching skating beginners. But when she returned to Moscow in search of more competitive prospects to mould, unease began to surface about the extremes to which she could resort. For all the positive press she attracted in Russia as a sculptor of champions, her most talented pupils would frequently suffer more alarming fates. Take Yulia Lipnitskaya, who was the same age as Valieva, 15, when she shot to fame with a team gold at the Sochi Olympics in 2014. Barely two years later, she had retired, citing her struggles with anorexia, which had led her to a rehabilitation clinic in Israel.
The ordeals described by Alina Zagitova, another of Tutberidze’s charges, were no less worrying. After taking a gold and a silver in Pyeongchang in 2018, she said of her Olympic campaign: “We were not drinking water at all. That is, we just rinsed our mouths and spat it all out.” The concern about the Russian “quad squad” here in Beijing, so called because of the astounding quadruple rotations Valieva has been performing in her jumps, is no less acute. Two of her team-mates were left at home in Russia after breaking bones that prevented them from qualifying for the Games. Another, 15-year-old Daria Usacheva, suffered such a serious hip injury during a warm-up last November that she returned to Moscow in a wheelchair.
Tutberidze has acquired a notoriety within the sport as a consequence of her skaters’ bodies breaking down so often. Her fellow Russian coaches have referred openly to the “Eteri expiration date”. In one interview with Russian television, she said: “Once you step off the podium, you’re nobody.” Benoit Richaud, the coach of Japan’s Kaori Sakamoto, an arch-rival to Tutberidze’s students, does not conceal his disquiet at the attrition rate. “If they don’t compete, they’re done,” he said. “It’s sad to watch.”
Despite accusations that Tutberidze is unhealthily obsessed with her athletes’ weight, she has not, until now, faced any concerted accusations of being involved in doping. The practice is relatively uncommon in women’s figure skating, and prior to the Valieva firestorm nobody in the coach’s camp had recorded an adverse test result. But speculation has persisted: in 2019, Anastasia Shabotova, then 13, said during an Instagram question-and-answer session: “How to perform consistently? Drink a lot of dope and you perform stably. That’s all. You just need to drink the right dope.” Asked if this applied to skaters mentored at Moscow’s Khrustalny ice rink, where Tutberidze coached, she replied: “Of course they do.”
Her remarks stirred outrage, with Shabotova subject to cyberbullying from across the Russian figure skating community. Such was the intensity of the backlash, she later retracted the claims. She has also since switched national allegiances, opting to represent Ukraine. At the time, Russia’s skating federation was able to attribute Shabotova’s outburst to a moment of youthful naivety. But in the aftermath of Valieva’s positive result, the focus on Tutberidze’s alleged excesses in training has resurfaced with a vengeance. It is an extraordinary fact that not one of her skaters has gone to multiple Olympics. Valieva walked through the skating mixed zone clutching a teddy bear. But there is mounting uncertainty as to how much longer, under the tutelage of the ruthless Tutberidze, her innocence can last.
