2 Young Athletes, 2 Very Different Results in an Olympic Doping

He was a teenager, old enough to compete in the Olympics, and he did it almost flawlessly. After that last performance, pumped his fist to the music from “Riverdance” and rushed to his coach, who lifted him on his shoulders to wave to the crowd. There was no need to wait for his score to know he had won.

Then, suddenly, the dream was gone: His gold medal was taken away After testing positive for a drug he didn’t know he was taking.

16-year-old athlete Andreea Raducan – when she and two other Romanian gymnasts swept the women’s podium at the 2000 Olympics – became a cautionary tale for young geniuses who conquered their sport by doing whatever the adults around them told them to do. He had woken up with a cold and the Romanian team doctor had given him an over-the-counter medicine that he had taken without hesitation. It contained pseudoephedrine, a banned substance.

The contrasts are stark with the treatment of Russian skater Kamila Valieva, who was allowed to compete in Beijing despite testing positive for a banned heart drug.

15-year-old Valieva could eventually get the same punishment as Raducan. The International Olympic Committee said it would delay the medal ceremony until the case is resolved if he takes the podium on Thursday. The Court of Arbitration for Sport said that the decision to allow him to compete was not a final decision, but an admission that banning him would have irreversible consequences if he was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing.

But it’s hard to reconcile the respect he’s received so far with the treatment of Raducan, who is only a year older and his situation even more uncertain.

Trimetazidine, the heart drug found in Valieva’s urine sample, has been linked to greater energy and stamina. accompanied by two additional substances that are not prohibited and can sometimes be used to help the heart reduces the likelihood of unintentionally taking trimetazidine.

In contrast, few have argued that Raducan takes pseudoephedrine for performance enhancing purposes or even enhances the substance’s performance. At the same Olympics, he tested clean for two other events where he excelled: the team final, where Romania won gold, and the vault final, where he won silver. (He hid these medals.)

But for Raducan’s all-around medal, the court concluded that his age and intentions were irrelevant. He confirmed the doctor was guilty and Raducan wasn’t, but said the rules were rules: He had a banned substance in his system, so he couldn’t keep the medal.

Raducan did not respond to requests for talks.

In an interview Tuesday, gymnast Dominique Moceanu, who was 14 when she won a gold medal with the USA team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, talked about what it’s like to be a kid competing under the supervision of adults who expect obedience. He said that he could imagine being given a prohibited substance without his knowledge, and that he would not have dared to refuse if he had known.

“If they said, ‘Here, it’s a vitamin,’ I would believe them,” said Moceanu, whose trainer Bela Karolyi trains Olympic champions with a strict training program very similar to that used by Valieva’s coach, Eteri Tutberidze. “What they said was what we did, and if you object to that, you’re in big trouble.”

However, Moceanu also said that allowing Valieva to compete was unfair to other athletes.

“Everyone needs to have the same rules,” he said. “This will open a whole box of worms for cheating, which is really unfortunate because underage gets stuck in the middle of everything.”