Adam Rippon had no interest in sticking around the Capital Indoor Stadium in Beijing Tuesday, Feb. 15, when Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva took the ice for the women’s single short program. “I wasn’t there for the skate — I left,” he tells Rolling Stone from Beijing. “I didn’t want to watch.”
At just 15 years old, Valieva had arrived at the 2022 Winter Olympics a heavy favorite, and off the bat, she helped the Russian Olympic Committee take home gold in the team event. But after the medal ceremony was delayed by a “legal issue,” it soon came out that Valieva had tested positive for metabolic modulator trimetazidine — a medication typically used to treat angina (or chest pain), which the World Anti-Doping has also banned as a performance-enhancing drug.
(Two other drugs typically used to treat the heart were detected in Valieva’s test as well, but…
